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Ubc /IDobern Ueacbers' Series 

Edited by WILLIAM C. BAGLEY 



FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 



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Ubc /iDobern XTeacbers' Series 

FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 



BY 

BOYD H. BODE 

v., 

PK0FES80B OF EDUCATION 
OHIO STATE UNIVEESITT 



ifieto gorfe 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1921 

All rights reserved 



PBINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMEBICA 



■3( 



Copyright, 1921, 
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 



Set up and electrotsrped. Published November, 1921. 



NOV 30 1921 



Press of J. J. Little & Ives Co. 
New York 



3)C!.A630511 

040 I 



PREFACE 

The purpose of this volume is to interpret present- 
day educational problems from the standpoint of 
pragmatic philosophy. The discussion is centered 
chiefly on two main topics; viz., the aims or ideals 
which should be dominant in education, and the nature 
of the mind or intelligence with which education has 
to deal. The book is written in the conviction that 
educational theory and practice have been vitiated by 
preconceptions which were historically inevitable but 
which are unjustifiable in the light of modern knowl- 
edge. These preconceptions must be eliminated if 
education is to make its proper contribution towards 
the enrichment of life and towards making the world 
safe for democracy. The development during recent 
years of scientific method in the field of education has 
brought with it a comparative neglect of the more 
fundamental issues. For the time being this shift 
of emphasis towards scientific investigation was prob- 
ably desirable. Its effect has been to place educational 
research on a permanent basis. But unless the study 
of detailed problems is properly correlated with theory, 
there is serious danger that education will simply be- 
come more complicated, and perhaps more mechanical, 
and not an agency of progress and reform. 



I 



Vi PREFACE 

In preparing this book I have been under constant 
and very extensive obligation to the writings of Pro- 
fessor John Dewey. I also owe a great debt to Pro- 
fessor W. C. Bagley, who, through his published works 
and through personal contact, has been the source of 
much suggestion and incentive, without which this 
book would perhaps never have been written. 

B. H. B. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Meaning of Education 1 

II. Educational Values 22 

III. Education and Democracy 42 

IV. The Development of Ideals 63 

V. Interest, Duty, and Effort , 84 

VI. The Process of Thinking 105 

/ VII.< Training in Thinking 126 

<5?^III. The Transfer of Training 145 

IX. The Soul-Substance Theory 163 

X. The Doctrine of Mental States 182 

XI. Consciousness as Behavior 199 

XII. Education and Philosophy 224 

Index 243 



vu 



EDITOR^S INTRODUCTION 

The serious study of educational problems may be 
undertaken from several points of departure, each of 
which represents a special point of view and, gener- 
ally speaking, a distinctive method of investigation. 
During the past twenty years notable progress has 
been made in the ''scientific'' study of education, and 
the literature in this field, especially in connection with 
educational psychology and educational measurements, 
has now grown to large proportions. A second type of 
study which employs the historical method and aims to 
trace the genesis of educational theory and practice has 
been much less in evidence, although a few contribu- 
tions of outstanding significance have been made in 
recent years. A third field even less conspicuous in so 
far as the number of its recent contributions is con- 
cerned is that which the present volume represents, — 
the philosophy of education. 

The teacher will profit by an acquaintance with all 
three of these fields. Certain of his problems can be 
solved only by the type of objective analysis and ex- 
perimentation that the scientific method involves. He 
wishes to know how well he has accomplished what he 
has set out to do: the measurement of his work is his 

recourse here, and the scientific study of education will 

ix 



X EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 

furnish him with at least a few dependable measures. 
He wishes to know how to classify his pupils and how 
to treat the various groups: the science of educational 
psychology will give him many helpful suggestions. 
He wishes to know how teachers in the past have met 
and solved their problems: the history of education 
will supply this information. 

There are, however, questions which neither the 
science of education nor the history of education will 
satisfactorily solve. Science will help the teacher to 
realize his aims and ideals; history will tell him the aims 
and the ideals that his predecessors have striven to 
reahze and how they went about it; but what should 
be the aims and ideals back of his own efforts? What 
should present-day education attempt? What standards 
of value should determine the materials of the curric- 
ulum, the organization of his school, his methods of 
instruction, his own intimate, and probably influential 
relations with his pupils? These are not only recurring 
questions; they are fundamental questions. 

A study of the philosophy of education will not and 
should not answer all of these questions for the teacher, 
but it should do much to enable him to answer them 
himself. This has always been the spirit of Professor 
Bode's own teaching, and he has succeeded admirably 
in making this the dominating spirit of his book. 

In American education there is a growing tendency 
to give to those actually engaged in the work of teach- 
ing a larger and larger voice in determining the edu- 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION xi' 

cational aims and ideals that the schools shall reflect 
and realize. It is essential, therefore, that the profes- 
sional education of the teacher should provide abun- 
dant opportunities for reflection upon and discussion 
of these fundamental questions. This does not neces- 
sarily mean that a course in the philosophy of education 
should precede all other courses in the preparation of 
teachers; there are, indeed, many good reasons for plac- 
ing the systematic study of these questions toward the 
close of the pre-service training in the normal school or 
the teachers college.* But before the teacher enters 
upon his professional work he should have had the op- 
portunity and the stimulus to think through some of 
these fundamental questions and to lay for himself a 
provisional foundation of guiding principles. He will 
also find it profitable and wholesome to return now and 
again to such a study to the end that he may consider 
varying points of view and revise his own position when 
convinced that it is untenable. 

In both the pre-service and the in-service education 
of teachers, then, Professor Bode's book should find a 
useful place. 

William C. Bagley. 



1 See a discussion of this problem in Bulletin No. 14, Carnegie Founda- 
tion for the Advancement of Teaching, pp. 182-183. 



FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 



FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

CHAPTER I 

THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 

The usual procedure, in most of our human affairs, 
is to do the things that need to be done and afterwards 
to construct a theory in order to explain just what was 
done and why it was done. Men engaged in farming 
before they had a science of agriculture; they treated 
diseases before they had a science of medicine; they 
divided up the surface of the earth before they had a 
science of geometry; they investigated and debated 
before they had a science of logic. The need of theory? 
does not become apparent until it is found that the 
results of our labors do not tally with our expectations. 
The crops fail to produce a yield, the remedies fail to 
effect a cure, the methods of determining boundary 
lines result in disputes and conflicts, the search after 
truth does not deliver us from the bondage of error, 
delusion, and superstition. In the light of the out- 
come we realize the need of examining our procedure 
in order to ascertain what has gone wrong, or perhaps 
to find out more in detail just what we were trying to 
do, and to formulate a more adequate mode of pro- 
cedure. We turn, in short, from practice to theory 
in order to make our practice more effective than it 
was before. 

1 



2 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

The history of education is an illustration of this 
rule. Education as a practice extends back as far as 
the beginnings of human existence. Even in the lowest 
forms of human society some education is required 
for the perpetuation of the community life. The child 
must learn how to make clothes and utensils, how to 
hunt and fish, how to raise crops, and how to comport 
himself as a member of his group. But this learning is 
accomplished without any necessary reference to 
theory, and even without any significant use of formal 
educational agencies. The individual becomes edu- 
cated and acquires membership in his community 
through direct participation in the practical affairs of 
life, through sharing in the activities that are already 
going on. He learns the arts of hunting, of agricul- 
ture, or other needful pursuits, by taking part in them; 
he learns by doing. To a considerable extent the sys- 
tem of apprenticeship was aimed at the same method 
of learning. The boy became a carpenter, a cobbler, a 
tailor, by making himself as useful as he could and 
acquiring skill as he went along. Education on this 
level tends to be a hand to mouth affair, with little 
occasion for reflection on the aims and methods that 
are involved. ' 

As life became more complex, however, these simple 
and easy forms of education became increasingly 
inadequate. Even in a system of apprenticeship a 
boy must have a certain preliminary educational equip- 
ment, such as is commonly associated with the three 



THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 3 

R's, if he is to have a fair chance. And this need of 
preUminary training is considerably greater in certain 
other callings. An illiterate boy would hardly get 
very far in law, engineering, or medicine, by direct 
association with those who are engaged in these pur- 
suits. Instead of sharing in these activities directly, 
he must begin a long way back. ' Moreover, he must 
be trained in the moral, social, and religious traditions 
of his community or group. Education thus becomes 
a distinctive and separate undertaking, in which the 
emphasis inevitably shifts from the achievement of 
immediate ends to the understanding of the principles 
that underlie the affairs of adult life. The school 
training of the prospective carpenter and contractor is 
less concerned with the building of houses than with 
measurements and computations, with the qualities of 
wood, with the sources of the lumber supply, with the 
conductivity of sound and heat, etc. Besides, the spe- 
cific vocation frequently remains to be determined 
later, so that education becomes even more detached 
from immediate ends. Hence there emerges the ideal 
of learning that is broad and flexible, capable of appli- 
cation to a diversity of situations; i.e., the ideal of a 
'^general" education. 

The conception of general education, then, is made 
necessary by the gap between the life of the child and 
the life of the adult. But this is not all. Some things 
that are done by adults are rated as good, while others 
are condemned as bad. We endeavor to keep the bad 



4 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

things out of the school environment and to give as 
much encouragement as possible to those which are 
good. Certain forms of gambling and burglary require 
considerable skill, but formal education is not intended 
to impart such skill. Evil pictures, evil books, evil 
language, are banished as inconsistent with the purpose 
of the school. That is, the school does not undertake 
to prepare for adult life as it actually is, but for adult 
life as idealized and refined. Education is employed 
as an agency both for conserving the past and for 
'' progress and reform.^' But, in order to do this, we 
must have some standard by which to choose between 
the good and the bad. When education becomes a 
distinctive undertaking, a formal affair, it brings with 
it the need of reflection on the aims and values of life. 
It becomes necessary to appeal to theory in order to 
secure guidance for practice. 

The problem that emerges at this point is a problem 
of the first magnitude. What is the supreme good or 
the highest aim of life? All sorts of aims have been 
proposed, varying from crass utility to the glory of God, 
or preparation for a life to come, but it has never been 
possible to secure agreement, and the prospect of agree- 
ment is now apparently as remote as ever. 

Perhaps the most promising approach to this diffi- 
cult problem is by noting first how aims arise and how 
they function in human experience. It is a familiar 
fact that among the lower animals reflex and instinc- 
tive movements, which are more or less mechanical in 



THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 5 

character, often take the place of conscious purpose. 
Birds migrate and build nests, chickens peck and 
scratch and run to cover, ants and bees maintain com- 
phcated domestic establishments, without being guided 
in any appreciable degree by purposes or aims. Conse- 
quently there is no continuous development of aims, 
which means that there is no progress, no civilization. 
In contrast with these lower forms of life, the human 
infant is peculiarly helpless and dependent upon learn- 
ing. Unless it can discover the meaning of things, so 
as to act with reference to ends or aims, it cannot se- 
cure the adjustment that is necessary for survival. 
Human beings possess many and varied impulses or 
tendencies, but these are not provided with fixed Hues 
of discharge laid down antecedently in the nervous 
system, and for this reason foresight and purpose are 
necessary, if these tendencies are to find expression. 
The fact that the mode of response is not fixed, as in 
the case of reflexes and instincts, means that expres- 
sion is possible in a variety of ways. Mechanical abil- 
ity, for example, may express itself in playing with 
blocks, or in building a boat, or in constructing a can- 
tilever bridge. That is, the expression of our native 
capacities has no ascertainable limit. It constantly 
takes on new forms, in the measure that we learn 
more about the nature of our environment and are so 
enabled to use it for the realization of our ends. 

This dependence of conduct on '^ meaning '^ is familiar 
enough. To burn one's fingers, to get scratched by the 



6 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

cat, or to quench one^s thirst at the drinking fountain, 
is to discover new meanings, which are then used for 
the guidance of conduct. Aims spring from the soil of 
experience, and new aims constantly arise as experience 
develops. Experience consequently has a marvelous 
flexibility and capacity for growth. The whole mass 
of human achievement has its origin in the fact that 
experience constantly suggests new possibilities, new 
ventures. The rolling stone suggests wheels, the snap 
and twang of a stretched cord suggest bow and arrow 
and stringed music, the dead leaf carried upward by 
the hot air of a bonfire suggests balloons and traveling 
in the air. The use of old experience for new ends is 
the commonest of facts; man is a born schemer and 
contriver. An invention like the steam engine inevita- 
bly becomes the parent of other inventions, such as the 
locomotive and the steamship, which in turn make 
possible all sorts of commercial and industrial projects; 
and this development is typical of what takes place in 
every walk of life. We seek that which we have set' 
our hearts upon, and other things are added unto us. 
It is never possible to forecast the full significance of 
an achievement or to anticipate the uses to which it 
may be put. Growth in knowledge and experience 
opens up new possibilities in geometric ratio, as shadov/s 
lengthen with the approach of sunset. We do not come 
into the world with a set of antecedent aims, but we 
develop aims and devise means for the realization of 
these aims as we go along. 



THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 7 

How aims and ideals of a political and social kind 
grow and become transformed in the course of expe- 
rience may be illustrated briefly from our own history. 
Our fundamental political creed has always been de- 
mocracy. But at the time of the Revolution democracy 
did not mean what it means at present. Its meaning 
at that time was (to put it roughly) political equality 
for white men. As a result of the Civil War this mean- 
ing became enlarged so as to include all men, without 
regard to race, color, or previous condition of servitude. 
Still later came a period of economic readjustment, in 
which the meaning of democracy became expanded so 
as to include the idea of fair and just economic oppor- 
tunity. This meaning, however, proved still too nar- 
row for the ideal of a world made safe for democracy; 
and the meaning of democracy was accordingly ex- 
tended so as to suggest that it means the application 
of the Golden Hule to all the collective undertakings of 
life. The name was retained throughout, but the ideal 
designated by the name was in continuous growth and 
change; and this development is typical of the process 
by which both the individual life and national life be- 
come enlarged and enriched. 

Now as to the bearing of all this on the question of 
aims in education. What was emphasized in the fore- 
going discussion is the fact that life is a process of 
growth. Human beings constantly utilize previous ex- 
periences for the creation of new aims, new ideals, new 
opportunities; and in so doing they give more fulness, 



8 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

more richness, to life, they m£>ke life more worth 
living. We call this progress, because there is more 
'Ho'^ the life of the civilized man than to the life of the 
savage; there is vastly more opportunity for the ex- 
pression of latent capacities and energies, which is 
what makes life worth while. Inside the schoolroom 
much the same process is going on. In learning the 
meaning of things the child is creating for himself a 
new environment, as a result of which new opportunities 
and new incentives are secured and the value of life is 
enhanced. To be sure, the race acquires its experiences 
slowly and painfully, whereas the school life of the 
child is spent in a selective environment, in which the 
materials are arranged and organized in such a way 
as to facilitate growth. The child's activities are 
guided and directed, so that by the time he reaches 
maturity he has traversed the whole ground and finds 
himself in the foremost ranks of time. But this differ- 
ence does not contravene the fact that education is 
growth, that it is a process in which appreciations, 
aims, and ideals develop and expand. 

Whatever else we may say about it, then, education 
is a process of growth ; it means a liberation of capacity. 
The aims that we set up in education are just guides 
and signposts to indicate the direction in which this 
growth is to take place. These aims are legion. As 
one writer says: '^To lead this boy to read Scott's 
novels instead of Old Sleuth's stories; to teach this 
girl to sew; to root out the habit of bullying from 



THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 9 

John's make-up; to prepare this class to study medi- 
cine, — these are samples of the millions of aims that 
we have actually before us in the concrete work of 
education." ^ 

It is evident, however, that this does not take us very 
far. Some aims are good and some are bad; some 
have considerable significance or value, while others 
have not. What is needed is some principle or stand- 
ard for selection. And so a variety of ultimate or final 
aims have been proposed, such as culture, discipline, 
citizenship, utility, knowledge, moral character, and a 
host of others, for the evaluation of educational 
materials. 

The fact that there are so many '^ultimate'' aims 
justifies a feeling of misgiving and suspicion. Generally 
speaking, all these aims are worthy and desirable; it is 
only when any one is set up as the supreme aim that it 
becomes objectionable. The reason is that an aim 
which is accepted as supreme or all-inclusive tends 
to place an undesirable restriction on growth, by turn- 
ing it too exclusively in one direction. In some cases, 
indeed, this restriction is deliberately made a part of 
the aim. There are, for example, many communities 
in this country that are eager to transmit to their 
children the language, the traditions, the ideals, the 
creeds, in brief, the general outlook upon life, which 
the founders of these communities brought with them 
as immigrants from Europe. The educational system 

iThorndike, E. L. — Education, p. 17, 



10 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

is accordingly organized with this end in view; and to 
prevent these distinctive traits from becoming im- 
mersed and lost, the disposition is sometimes fostered 
in the community to fence itself off from all unneces- 
sary contact with the outside world. An education of 
this sort may be fairly extensive and yet disagreeably 
lopsided. An individual thus trained is in America 
but not of it; he is unable to share in the national life 
round about him because of his educational deformity. 
While this is doubtless an extreme case, the same 
tendency is discernible wherever an aim is exalted to a 
position of supremacy over the rest. It is most easily 
seen, perhaps, in connection with the ideal of utility. 
When the spirit of materialistic utility becomes ram- 
pant, conditions become unfavorable for the cultivation 
of literature and the fine arts, or for manners and 
morals. The aspirations and enthusiasms of men be- 
come atrophied. 0. Henry tells of a cattle-man who, 
when he had made a fortune, could think of no use for 
his money except to buy saddles with it. Training 
may prevent growth. The other- worldism of the medi- 
aeval period, which directed men's attention away from 
the natural sciences and from the study of social con- 
ditions, undoubtedly cramped their outlook and their 
sympathies. The conventional ideal of culture, which 
was borrowed from the Greeks and which has played so 
significant a role in education, likewise imposed serious 
limitations, in that it perpetuated the aristocratic tradi- 
tion by encouraging the cultivation of the intellect and 



THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 11 

the sensibilities, apart from the more active and practi- 
cal concerns of men. Each of these ideals represents a 
truth, perhaps, but it is not the whole truth. If we set 
up any one of them as the all-inclusive end of education, 
we do violence to the rest. Life is more than vocation, 
more than culture, more than knowledge, more than 
citizenship. All these interests, to be sure, are inter- 
wo^n^ an endless tangle, so as to give some color 
to the notion that some one of them may be the final 
end, for which the others serve as means. It is evident, 
for example, that vocation and knowledge are necessary 
for good citizenship. But the converse is also true; 
and in any event, our perspective becomes distorted 
if we accord no value to knowledge or vocation except 
that of means to an end. 

In view of this situation the suggestion presents 
itself that our best clue to the educational problem lies 
in the concept of growth. Perhaps the most desirable 
and significant educational ideal for us to adopt is 
that of fostering intellectual and spiritual growth. If 
this be the case, then the aim of education, in so far 
as education can be said to have an inclusive aim, is to 
provide as adequately as possible for the creation of 
new aimsrj As was said a moment ago, life is a process 
in which the present is continuously enlarged and 
transformed. Present achievements become stepping- 
stones to further achievements; present appreciations 
prepare the way for further appreciations; present 
growth gives capacity for further growth. To set up 



12 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

fixed, inclusive ends in advance is to ignore the fact 
that life is too varied and too expansive to observe 
such limits. Our horizon retreats as we proceed, our 
aims and ideals change with the changes in our environ- 
ment and with our growth in intellectual stature. It 
is precisely in this progressive self-expression, this en- 
largement of capacity, this continuous enrichment of 
experience, that life finds its fulfilment and its sufficient 
excuse for being. Education, too, means growth; why 
not convert the fact into an ideal? 

Taken abstractly the concept of growth is, of course, 
too empty to furnish any guidance for educational prac- 
tice. Since, as a matter of fact, all education, whether 
good or bad, is a form of growth, the concept of growth, 
when set up as an ideal, must mean a certain specifiable 
kind of development. A considerable part of this book 
is just an attempt to make this concept definite and con- 
crete. But the general character of this concept or ideal 
may be indicated at this point. The ideal of growth was 
suggested as an escape from the narrowing tendencies 

: of other ideals. An education is narrow if it provides 
development in one direction in such a w^y as to put 

'^ up barriers to development in other dir'isctions. If 
there is a one-sided emphasis on utility, or discipline, 
or some other end, the capacity to understand and 
appreciate other things is impaired or perhaps wholly 
lost. The result of such training is exemplified in the 
mathematician who did not care for Tennyson^s Charge 
of the Light Brigade, because it '^didn't prove any- 



THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 13 

thing. '^ The ideal of growth means training of such 
' a sort as to facihtate understanding and appreciation 
of all human interests. The ideal requires that things 
be taught in their '^social context," which means that 
they must be presented in such a way as to illuminate 
human life in general. The mathematician just men- 
tioned was trained narrowly, not merely because he had 
neglected the study of poetry, but because he had not 
even studied mathematics properly, from the stand- 
point of the ideal of growth. Why do men study 
mathematics? Partly, no doubt, for its utility. Partly, 
too, because they like to solve problems, as others like 
to solve puzzles. But it also gives an insight into the 
orderliness and scope of natural processes, which has 
led some mathematicians to say that ^^God geome- 
trizes"; and this desire to understand has made mathe- 
matics a vehicle of aspiration and imaginative effort. 
When mathematics is studied in such a way as to reveal 
what it has actually meant in human experience, it 
quickens instead of deadens our sensitiveness to practi- 
cal, esthetic, and moral interests. 

The ideal of growth, then, calls for '^social context," j 
in the sense that the subject must be presented in such 
a way as to show what it has meant in the experience 
of men. Physiology, for example, has a bearing on„7 
health, but this is only a small part of its meaning. It 
may also give us a '^realizing sense" of what scientific 
procedure has meant in the elimination of superstition 
and the improvement of human well-being; through 



14 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

its bearing on sanitation and hygiene it may give us a 
new sense of social obligations; through the study of 
the wonderful adaptations and economies of nature, 
particularly on a background of evolution, there may 
come a tremendous widening of the horizon and a 
powerful appeal to the imagination and the esthetic 
sensibilities. If taught in this all-round way, the 
subject prepares for all sorts of appreciations and appli- 
cations that are unforeseen at the time. All the other 
subjects in the curriculum are in a similar case. History 
lends itself equally to rigid, scientific research and to the 
cultivation of moral and dramatic discrimination. Lit- 
erature may be studied in its concrete, human context 
and so become the expression, not only of artistic qual- 
ities, but of a complex social, economic, and political 
background. Mathematics, through the precise use 
of technical terms and through concise and systematic 
exposition, may be made to afford valuable training in 
method; and its ^^ beautiful demonstrations" carry an 
unmistakable esthetic appeal. These results, it is 
needless to say, are not obtained automatically. They 
are not realized, except incidentally and in spite of the 
teacher, unless the material is so used as to bring them 
about. They must be pointed out and clothed in flesh 
and blood by the use of description, application, illus- 
tration, and whatever other resources may be at the 
disposal of the teacher. 

With such a variety of possible values inherent in 
the subject matter, it is evident, furthermore, that 



THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 15 

, different pupils in the same class may get very different 
results as to the kinds of value that are secured. To 
one pupil the abiding result, after a study of Csesar^s 
wars from Latin texts, may be a taste for language; to 
another it may be an interest in strategy and tactics; 
to a third a sense of the superiority of civilized man in 
his unswerving devotion to a purpose. The subject 
may be made to serve as an instrumentality for securing 
a wide variety of educational goods; and it is impossible 
to say in advance which of these will prove to be of the 
greatest significance in the life of the pupil. 

If educational materials are presented in this way, 
we conserve our spiritual heritage and make provision 
for the exigencies of the future. We cannot solve the 
problems of life in advance. We cannot instruct 
pupils how to vote or how to invest their money twenty 
years hence; we cannot tell them which friendships 
to cultivate, which books to read, which magazines to 
take, which side to support in social and political move- 
ments. What we can do, however, is to acquaint them^ 
with the main things that should be taken into account, 
as based on the experience of the race, so that they may 
have a proper sense of values when they are called upon 
to make their own decisions ; and it is in this sense that , 
we can provide a general education. 

The fact that an aim or ideal has won acceptance 
may ordinarily be taken to mean that it represents a 
value which has been tested in human experience and 
has proved its worth. To disregard the experience of 



16 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

the past would be evidence of stupidity. But it is 
man's prerogative to look before as well as after; and 
unless we cultivate the disposition to give frank and 
cordial recognition to new values and possibilities as 
they may arise, we become the slaves of tradition. 
The significance of new achievements is then over- 
looked ; they are regarded, not as intrinsically valuable, 
but, at best, as merely means for the realization of 
values that are already recognized and accepted. For 
Aristotle the practical affairs and duties of life were of 
value chiefly or essentially because they made pos- 
sible the cultivated life of leisure. They were just 
means to an end, and not intrinsically valuable. Per- 
haps there was much to be said for this at the time, as 
much might be said for such a view even now, in the 
case of certain occupations, where the subdivision of 
labor has made the individual little more than a mech- 
anism. As things now are, some jobs have little value, 
except as means to the weekly pay check. But this 
attitude of mind persisted indiscriminately for cen- 
turies after the period when Aristotle wrote, so that in- 
dustry and commerce, even after they had undergone 
a development of stupendous complexity and poten- 
tiality, were still looked down upon as fit only for hoi 
polloi. 

For education this development meant a magnificent 
opportunity. When commerce and industry became 
so intertwined with the lives of individuals and nations 
as to afford splendid possibilities for the spiritual devel- 



THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 17 

opment of those engaged in them, education should 
have been the first agency or institution to recognize 
this fact and to exploit it for its own purposes. But it 
was so wedded to the past that this recognition was 
impossible. The idea that life is a ^^ wide-open" affair 
and that man may become humanized and spiritually 
enriched through an intimate, sympathetic understand- 
ing of these human concerns on a wide scale, had 
gained no real foothold. Mind so the tradition con- 
tinued that a liberal education consisted in the culti- 
vation of certain appreciations, which remained more 
or less detached from the great world of affairs, to the 
detriment of both education and '^practical" life.*— Edu- 
cation became a citadel of seclusion, which provided 
surcease from sorrow for some and encouragement for 
the exhibition of snobbery for others. As a result, the 
world of affairs remained blind to its opportunities and 
spiritual significance. The notion that the things 
which ennoble and enrich life must be sought outside 
of business was widely accepted by business men them- 
selves. That commercial and industrial affairs should 
be run on the principle, ' There is no sentiment in busi- 
ness' was regarded, if not as axiomatic, at least as 
natural and excusable. The purpose of business was to 
'make one's pile.' In other relations of life these men 
were frequently humane enough. We have become 
fairly well accustomed to the spectacle of philanthro- 
pies sustained in a spirit of sincere good will with for- 
tunes that were accumulated by processes which showed 



18 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

neither pity for vanquished competitors nor special 
consideration for employees. 

For a considerable time science was in much the same 
state as industry. Training in science was compared 
unfavorably with training in the classics. Perhaps 
this was due in part to the character of early scientific 
teaching, but it is undeniable that the possibilities of 
science as a humanizing agency, through an apprecia- 
tion of its importance for our outlook upon the world 
and for an understanding of everyday life, were largely 
neglected. The notion prevailed that spiritual values 
must be cultivated outside of science, as outside of 
business. Even so keen a critic as Matthew Arnold 
was apparently unable to rid himself of the precon- 
ception that business was nothing but machinery, and 
that science was just cold intellect, divorced from 
moral and esthetic enthusiasms. These, he holds, must 
come from the study of ^^ humane letters," and so he 
argues that the familiar '' classical" type of education 
must always have first place in our educational scheme.^ 
The many-sidedness of science escapes him entirely. 
In Arnold's view, as a commentator describes it, '^sci- 
ence puts before the student the crude facts of nature, 
bids him accept them dispassionately, rid himself of all 
discoloring moods as he watches the play of physical 
force, and convert himself into a pure intelligence; he 
is simply to observe, to analyze, to classify, and to 
systematize, and he is to go through these processes 

1 Cf . Arnold's essays : Literature and Science and Sweetness and Light. 



THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 19 

continually with facts that have no human quality, 
that come raw from the great whirl of the cosmic 
machine. As a discipline, then, for the ordinary man, 
the study of science tends not one whit toward humani- 
zation, toward refinement, toward temperamental re- 
generation; it tends only to develop an accurate 
trick of the senses, fine observation, crude intellectual 
strength. . . . ' Literature nourishes the whole spirit 
of man; science ministers only to the intellect." ^ 

The passage just quoted presents a striking instance 
of what may happen if education is not alive to the 
possibilities of its subject matter. The claim that 
science deals with '^ facts that have no human quality" 
can be made only by a mind that is itself singularly 
obtuse to human quality. Sensitiveness to human 
quality is not the exclusive product or possession of 
any subject or special group of subjects; it is the natu- 
ral result of teaching which takes due heed of social 
context, so as to nourish 'Hhe whole spirit of man." 
Unless this sensitiveness is made an ideal — which is 
just another name for the ideal of growth — there is 
always the danger that some values will be neglected 
and thus a certain cleavage created between education 
and life. If education is to avoid the besetting sin of 
one-sidedness, it must maintain an attitude of watch- 
ful regard for the possible values of experience, in 
order that all experience, as far as may be, may con- 
tribute to the enrichment or betterment of life. 

^ Gates, L. E, — Selections from Matthew Arnold, p. xxvi. 



20 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

The gist of the preceding discussion may be stated 
briefly as follows: When formal education becomes 
necessary in order to fit the individual for his place in 
the social order, there arises a need for reflection on 
the aims and purposes of education and of life. Many 
aims have been proposed, but if we view intelligence 
from the standpoint of development, the conclusion is" 
indicated that aims are constantly changing and that 
the most significant clue for education lies in the con- 
cept of growth. (Education is, as a matter of fact, the 
liberation of capacity; or, in Bagley's phraseology, it 
means training for achievement. ^ To make this lib- 
eration of capacity, or this process of growth, a control- 
ling ideal means the cultivation of sensitiveness to the 
human quality of subject matter by presenting it in 

' its social context. The fact that a given type of educa- 
tion is classed as liberal or cultural is no guarantee 
that it fosters this quality of mind. Unless this sensi- 
tiveness is deliberately cultivated, many human inter- 
ests, such as business, science, and technical vocations, 

, do not become decently humanized. And to cultivate 
this sensitiveness deliberately means that it is made 
the guiding ideal for education. 

From this standpoint it is evident that we must look 
to the concept of growth for our standard by which to 
judge educational values. It must indicate to us what 
sort of education is to be desired and why. It neces- 
sarily determines our judgment of values and method 

^Bagley, W. C. — Educational Valiies, p. 114. 



THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 21 

of procedure throughout ; since, in the end, educational 
theory is but the elaboration and appHcation of the 
conception that embodies our understanding of the 
meaning of education. 

REFERENCES 

Bagley, W. C. — The Educative Process, ch. 3. 

Educational Values, ch. 7. 
Betts, G. H. — Social Principles of Education, ch. 3. 
Butler, N. M. — The Meaning of Education, ch. 1. 
Charters, W. W. — Methods of Teaching, ch. li^ 
Dewey, J. — Democracy and Education, chs. 1, 2, 3, 4. 
Hanus, p. — Educational Aims and Educational Values, ch. 1. 
Moore, E. C. — What Is Education? ch. 4. 
RuEDiGER, W. €. — Principles of Education, chs. 3, 4, 5. 
Strayer, G. D. — Brief Course in the Teaching Process t ch. 1. 
Thorndike, E. L. — Education, ch. 2. 



CHAPTER II 

EDUCATIONAL VALUES 

In a discussion of values it is customary to distin- 
guish between intrinsic and instrumental values. When 
we set out to realize an aim, we may do so because the 
end that is sought has a value on its own account, it is 
something that is directly appreciated. Men seek 
fame, wealth, power, comfort, and luxury, because 
these things have an immediate value, which requires 
no explanation or justification. As James remarks: 
^^Not one man in a billion, when taking his dinner, ever 
thinks of utility. He eats because the food tastes good 
and makes him want more. If you ask him why he 
should want to eat more of what tastes like that, in- 
stead of revering you as a philosopher, he will probably 
laugh at you for a fool.'' ^ Such things have an intrinsic 
value; they explain themselves. But these things 
which are immediately valuable may, in addition, have 
a further value. A man's dinner normally serves to 
maintain his health and strength ; his fame may bring 
him wealth and desirable friendships; his power may 
enable him to promote pet schemes, or to reward his 
friends and punish his enemies. Over and above their 
intrinsic value, these things possess an instrumental 

1 James, W. — Psychology, Vol. II, p. 386. 

22 ' 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 23 

value, in that they make possible the realization of 
other ends the value of which is immediate or intrinsic. 

This contrast between intrinsic and instrumental 
values affords a convenient and useful distinction, pro- 
vided that we recognize its limitations. It must be 
borne in mind, in the first place, that both kinds of 
value may be combined in the same thing. A person 
may be keenly interested in things pertaining to music 
or engineering, partly because these subjects have a 
natural fascination for him and partly because they 
enable him to make a living. And, secondly, there is 
such a thing as an immediate or intrinsic appreciation 
of instrumental values. We may realize, for example, 
that a new invention is ^^beautifully'' adapted for its 
purpose, or that a certain kind of knowledge, such as 
chemistry or mathematics, has a splendid utility for 
certain purposes. To say that we realize this is to say 
that our awareness has the quality of appreciation, of 
the sort already indicated in connection with intrinsic 
values. The point is important, owing to the preva- 
lence of the notion that appreciations are to be culti- 
vated only in connection with certain subjects, such as 
literature and the fine arts. In opposition to this view 
it is necessary to insist that appreciation in some 
form is an indispensable element in all effective 
education. 

Whether the activity in which we are immediately 
engaged springs from the perception of intrinsic or of 
instrumental values depends on circumstances and on 



24 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

native preferences. The invalid may eat his dinner 
with an effort, because he knows that his system re- 
quires it; the philanthropist may seek wealth, not in 
order to be rich, but to do the things he wants to do. 
In these cases the dinner and the wealth, respectively, 
are desired solely for their instrumental value. Or, as 
has been said, the end that is sought may have both 
kinds of values, as when a man desires wealth, both for 
its own sake and for the sake of other ends. What 
these other ends will be is frequently more or less un- 
determined. As regards educational values, for exam- 
ple, we cannot tell beforehand what uses a person is 
going to make of his knowledge of French, yet we may 
be quite sure that the opportunities will be more nu- 
merous, and more varied than they would be if he had 
studied Choctaw instead. In other words, it is both 
possible and necessary to compare educational values 
so as to secure most effectively and economically the 
ends that education seeks to realize. 

Such comparison, it will be observed, has to do with 
instrumental values; i.e. with the relation of present 
aims to future aims. So far as intrinsic values or imme- 
diate appreciations are concerned, there does not seem 
to be much point to such comparisons. One person has 
a bent for mechanics, another for music, a third for 
mathematics, a fourth for language and poetry. Life 
fulfills itself in many ways. But which is the better 
or of the greater worth? To the born poet literature 
offers itself as the best thing in life; but to the born 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 25 

mathematician there is nothing that can compare with 
mathematics. An argument between two such persons 
as to the relative values of such preferences would seem 
as fruitless as a discussion between an elephant and a 
tiger as to the comparative merits of vegetarianism and 
a meat diet. 

The case is different when we turn to a consideration 
of instrumental values. Mathematics is clearly of more 
importance for engineering than is history, while on the 
other hand history is more important for journalism or 
politics than is mathematics. The suggestion has ac- 
cordingly been made that we draw up a list of the 
chief educational values or '^objectives," consisting of 
such headings as vocational utility, discipHne, scientific 
method, esthetic sensibility, sociability, etc., and then 
use these objectives as a basis for the selection of sub- 
ject matter. Thus vocational subjects would be chosen 
for their utility; the natural sciences would furnish 
training in method; literature, music, etc., would pro- 
vide for the development of taste and imagination; and 
history would give an insight into human relationships. 
It is assumed in this proposal that each subject has a 
peculiar fitness for realizing a specific educational end, 
which furnishes us the necessary clue for the selection 
of subject matter. 

Further consideration, however, tends to raise doubts. 
It was pointed out in the preceding chapter that the 
different subjects in the curriculum have a variety of 
aspects, which makes it impossible to say offhand that 



26 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

a given subject will serve better for the realization of 
one of these aspects than another. Vocational training 
and the sciences have, for example, as well as literature, 
an element of imagination and appreciation; and, as 
well as history and civics, a social bearing. In fact, a 
variety of ^^objectives'' can normally be realized in 
connection with any given subject. Even a subject 
like writing can be made to serve the interests of the 
esthetic sense and of conscientiousness or pride of 
workmanship, as well as of plain utility. We have no 
basis for the selection of subject matter until it has 
been decided which kind of '^ sociability" or ''beauty," 
or other quality is to be cultivated. Is the apprecia- 
tion of classic poetry and statuary, for example, more 
to be desired than the emotional thrill arising from the 
contemplation of an artistic bathtub or a blue-ribbon 
Poland China hog? Is the knowledge of human rela- 
tionships afforded by history more valuable than that 
which springs from participation in athletics or from 
membership in a whist club? Does work in plumbing 
or typewriting have more utility than has work in 
economics or the sciences? The objectives, as they 
stand, are simply abstractions which include things 
that are not only diverse but even incompatible. Ideals 
of social organization or ''sociability" vary all the way 
from communism or anarchy to absolute monarchy, 
just as taste in music ranges from the sorriest ragtime 
to classical compositions. Calling them by the same 
name is not equivalent to providing an aim or standard. 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 27 

The practical way of avoiding this difficulty is to 
make the objectives more specific by taking meanings 
upon which there is already some sort of agreement. 
Appreciation or beauty is taken to mean literature and 
art; sociability is supposed to refer chiefly to history 
and political science; scientific method is a name for 
the method of the physical sciences. Each objective, 
therefore, has its own special subject matter. From 
this standpoint there is no place for *' beauty" or '^ so- 
ciability" in a subject like economics, which must be 
limited to some specific objective, such as '^wealth" 
or ^^ scientific method." What is left is science made 
dismal. It is impossible to bring in other objectives 
without conceding that there are different kinds of 
''beauty" and ''sociability," which would mean that 
our objectives had once more ceased to be specific. 

If it be granted that a single subject will ordinarily 
serve for the realization of various objectives, the whole 
perspective changes. The objectives are then used to 
get as rich a meaning as possible out of the subjects, 
which means that they become hints or indications to 
the various possible meanings. They point out the most 
obvious and most important meanings, but we are no 
longer limited to just those meanings. The real purpose 
becomes something else; viz., what we have previously 
termed the "liberation of capacity" or the ability to 
see the subject matter in a wide context of relation- 
ships, so as to provide a rich background for the inter- 
pretation of subsequent experience. 



28 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

One reason, apparently, why the view under discus- 
sion has commended itself is that it has a pleasing ap- 
pearance of dealing scientifically with educational aims. 
All that we need to do is to ascertain, presumably by 
some form of the questionnaire method, which aims or 
values are most worth while or most worthy of conserva- 
tion. When this has been done, the rest of our task 
will consist in selecting the subject matter that is best 
suited to realize these aims. The procedure is engag- 
ingly simple and objective, because no account is taken 
of the need to provide for the creation of new aims, so 
as to facilitate the constant expansion and enrichment 
of experience. An attitude of this kind is more con- 
cerned to conserve the past than to ensure development 
in the future. Unless the subjects that are taught are 
set in a wide context of meaning, they remain relatively 
isolated and static, as in the cases, previously cited, of 
the traditional cultural studies and modern business. 
(See page 17.) 

As was intimated a moment ago, it is not intended 
to imply that the listing of educational objectives 
serves no useful purpose of any kind. The point is 
simply that it does not provide us with acceptable aims 
and affords no principle for the selection of subject 
matter. A consideration of the objectives may be use- 
ful to the teacher for the purpose of securing hints or 
clues to the different values that may be realized in the 
study of any given subject. If used in this way, the 
objectives may tell us what to bear in mind, what to 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 29 

' emphasize, what applications to make. It is only when ' 
the assumption is made that a subject is intended to 
serve one of these objectives more or less exclusively 
that danger arises, for this assumption leads naturally 
to the neglect of other possible values and so tends to , 
make the teaching of inferior quality. ^ 

In attempting a different approach to the problem 
of educational values, we may take as our point of de- 
parture the fact that intelligent behavior is conditioned 
upon the discovery of meanings. To some extent such 
discovery may doubtless take place through direct expe- 
rience with objects; that is, without the intervention 
of any social agency. A child may discover for himself 
that thorns are sharp, that the couch is soft and com- 
fortable, that the fire in the grate gives warmth; and 
so, for that matter, may the family dog. But in the 
main, education is a social affair, in the sense that it is 
dependent upon the discovery of the meanings that 
things have for others. The meaning of a hammer is 
understood when we grasp the purpose of the carpenter 
to drive nails; the meaning of a spade when we perceive 
that the soil in the garden is to be loosened and turned 
over; the meaning of pencil and paper when we under- 
stand their relation to writing and drawing. The rap- 
turous possibilities of these objects would be nonex- 
istent if attention to what others are doing had not 
endowed them with new meanings and thus made them 
stimuli to new modes of behavior. By taking heed of 
what others are doing, the child gains a mastery of the 



30 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

means for the expression of the capacities with which 
he is endowed by nature. Through learning dance steps 
and songs he gratifies his sense of rhythm and music ; 
through participation in family affairs he enjoys the 
sense of community or membership in his Httle group ; 
and similarly it is through the sharing of aims and in- 
terests that he becomes a mechanic, a farmer, or a pro- 
fessional man. Speaking generally, we may say that 
education is a matter of gaining an understanding of 
the meaning which the things in our environment have 
to the members of our community. 

This conclusion points to a standard for the deter- 
mination of educational values. From the present 
standpoint, education may be described as a process of 
initiating the individual into the life of the community. 
Unless the individual can secure an insight into the 
aims and purposes of others, he does not fully partici- 
pate in the life of the community. It is this widening 
of the horizon that gives life and gives it more abun- 
dantly. Since this larger and richer life is conditioned 
upon the understanding of our social environment, it 
would seem to follow that educational values may be 
compared on the basis of the degree of insight which 
they afford into the doings of others. What is funda- 
mental must be judged by reference to the life of the 
group or community. Arithmetic, for example, is more 
fundamental than Latin, because relations of quantity 
or number must be understood if we are to get an in- 
sight into much of what our fellowmen are doing, 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 31 

whereas it cannot be urged that an understanding of 
Latin is necessary to the same degree. Without a 
knowledge of numbers we should be shut oiit, to a much 
greater extent, from participation in whatever is going 
on than we should be without an understanding of 
Latin. Arithmetic will open ten doors where Latin will 
open but one. Within a given subject we can apply the 
same test. Some material has a wide and varied appli- 
cability, while other material, such as logarithms or 
bank discount in arithmetic, is more specialized and 
technical. As Dewey says: '^The things which are 
socially most fundamental, that is, which have to do 
with experiences in which the widest groups share, are 
the essentials. The things which represent the needs of 
specialized groups and technical pursuits are second- 
ary.'' 1 

J This has sometimes been called the ^'social criterion'' 
^of educational values. The statement just given, how- 
ever, is still vague. As it stands, it might be taken to 
mean that educational values are to be determined in 
a purely quantitative way, without regard to the 
environment in which the pupil happens to live. 
Proceeding in this way we should come to the conclu- 
sion that, since English is spoken more widely than 
Danish, a child in Denmark should study English in 
preference to its native tongue. Or it might be argued 
that, since American history concerns a greater number 
of people than the history of Switzerland, the former 

* Dewey, J. — Democracy and Education, p. 225. 



32 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

should have precedence in the Swiss schools. But this 
is obviously not what is intended. The reference to the 
social environment does not consist in counting noses, 
but in giving a broad outlook to the life that is lived by 
the pupil. Education, like charity, should begin in 
the vicinity of the home ; the import of the social crite- 
rion is that it should not be limited to that vicinity. It 
is acknowledged that education is necessary to fit the 
child for participation in the life of the community, 
but such participation may be conceived very narrowly. 
The ideal of participation may be dominated by con- 
siderations of earning power, and have no reference to 
the requirements for continued growth. That is, edu- 
cation may be concerned simply to fit the child for a 
certain occupation or station in life, and make no pro- 
vision for securing progressive enrichment of life. When 
such a conception prevails, the child's education may 
be considered as completed when a certain mastery of 
the three R's has been attained; or, if anything more is 
added, it must be of a strictly ^^ practical" sort. No 
attempt is then made to secure a wider outlook by pro- 
viding a historical and scientific background through 
which the everyday routine may take on new meanings 
and new possibilities. As against this, the present 
standpoint would hold that it is better, under normal 
circumstance, to teach the principles of plant growth 
than the knack of raising cabbages, and better to study 
national history than the political organization of the 
county and state. The general is to be preferred, pro- 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 33 

vided that it illuminates everyday life and does not 
degenerate into the abstract learning which is not 
applicable to anything in particular and which is usu- 
ally condemned as mere ''book learning.'^ 

It appears, then, that culture, or broad comprehen- 
sion, is not incompatible with vocational training.* 
These two form a contrast only when vocational train- 
ing has no other purpose than to prepare the learner 
to do certain specific things. To qualify, for example, 
as a stenographer in a law office requires a certain tech- 
nical vocabulary, a certain rate of speed, and a certain 
degree of accuracy; to be a salesman requires a certain 
minimum arithmetical ability and a certain knowledge 
of the goods that are to be sold; to be a shipping clerk 
requires some knowledge of transportation facilities 
and perhaps some commercial geography. What these 
requirements are can be determined empirically, so 
that the content of the training can be made perfectly 
definite. Vocational training becomes a doubtful 
blessing when, putting aside all responsibility for further 
growth, it recognizes no higher aim than to place itself 
on the same definitely quantitative level as a factory 
and to turn out a product that can be guaranteed to 
have an equipment for the specific job for which it was 
intended. 

This scheme, it may be added, is not necessarily 
limited to vocational training, but has been proposed 
for education generally. Let us find out, as definitely 
as possible, the precise amount of every subject that 



34 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

the child needs to know, and then proceed to impart 
that amount. Whether appUed to education in general 
or to vocational training in particular, this scheme looks 
upon education as preparation for a fixed and definite 
groove or pigeonhole, in which life goes on with a maxi- 
mum of routine and a minimum of intelligence. It is a 
view that involves a whole philosophy of life. It regards 
life as having aims that are essentially fixed; it treats 
education less as an agency for the enrichment of life 
than as an instrumentality for ^'getting on/' but with 
the implication that '^getting on'' means, not so much 
a constantly expanding horizon of aims and apprecia- 
tions, as a constant gain in expertness within the nar- 
row limits that were originally marked out in making 
the choice of occupation. Our hypothetical stenogra- 
pher or salesman, for example, might be too deficient 
in general training to acquire understanding and appre- 
ciation of what his work or that of his firm really means 
when taken in its social context. The expansion of life, 
and the incentives to interest, service, and loyalty, 
which come from the larger view, are withheld from 
him; he is condemned to a life that is, by comparison, 
stale, flat, and unprofitable. 

A training that does not provide for growth becomes 
a means for promoting a caste system, in which the 
thinking is done by a few, while the rest are not sup- 
posed to be in any need of a broad understanding. As- 
soon as we undertake to provide for later growth; i.e., 
provide the general training through which it will be: 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 35 

i possible to get insight into a wider range of activities, 
Iwe are obliged to give up the original plan of mapping 
:0ut a course of study by finding out just what is needed 
ifor a specific occupation. This shift of emphasis, how- 
ever, does not mean the abandonment of vocational 
1 training, but the substitution of a different kind of voca- 
; tional training. It means greater attention to the broad 
; aspects and less attention, if need be, to the special 
features of the occupation for which preparation is 
imade. The prospective plumber would relate his 
I special knowledge to the principles of physics and 
mechanics; the prospective salesman would broaden 
•out, perhaps in the direction of industry and economics. 
The point is that vocational training can move in either 
direction. It can utilize special knowledge so as to get 
a wider perspective, or it can follow a course of study 
• in which the aim is not appreciation but efficiency and 
production, and which is content to limit the size of the 
man by the size of his job. Fundamentally, the issue in 
vocational training is the question whether the indi- 
vidual is to be regarded as a means or as an end, whether 
he is to be trained so as to become an effective mechan- 
ism or to cultivate experiences that bring progressive 
enlargement and fulness of life. 

The obligation to make provision for progressive 
development in later life is the justification that lies 
back of what has been known of recent years as the 
doctrine of ^^ common elements" or ^'minimum essen- 
tials." Unless the individual is so trained that he can 



36 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

participate, intellectually and emotionally, in the 
larger activity of which he is a part, he is robbed of his 
spiritual birthright; and even the interests of efficiency 
or productivity suffer in the end. Systems of '^ scien- 
tific management'' which place all the responsibility 
and initiative with the persons in charge, so a recent 
writer declares, have not been strikingly successful, 
for the reason that there is no intelligent cooperation, 
no real sharing on the part of the men. The system 
claims that ^' both managers and men are working under 
the control of science; yet, as a matter of fact, this 
science is mostly visible only to the management; and 
is little or not at all visible to the men. They see only 
the orders. The system represents a halfway step, 
however, towards actual and inevitable scientific man- 
agement. Science rules in the planning-room ; it must 
also rule in the consciousness of the workmen." ^ To 
quote again from Dewey: ''An education which ac- 
knowledges the full intellectual and social meaning of a 
vocation would include instruction in the historic 
background of present conditions; training in science 
to give intelligence and initiative in dealing with mate- 
rials and agencies of production; and study of eco- 
nomics, civics, and politics, to bring the future worker 
into touch with the problems of the day and the various 
methods proposed for its improvement. Above all, it 
would train power of readaptation to changing condi- 
tions so that future workers would not become blindly 

1 Bobbitt, F. — The Curriculum, p. 84. 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 37 

subject to a fate imposed upon them. This ideal has 
to coitend not only with the inertia of existing educa- 
tiona. traditions, but also with the opposition of those 
who are intrenched in command of the industrial 
machnery, and who realize that such an educational 
system if made general would threaten their ability to 
use others for their own ends."^ 

It is not implied, of course, that the right selection of 
subject matter is sufficient to guarantee the result. No 
matter in what way or for what purpose a course of 
stu'dy may be constructed, the spirit of a narrow voca- 
tio^nalism may remain to plague us. The whole process 
ma^-y be guided by more or less vague notions of practi- 
cality, to the serious detriment of educational ideals. 
In ^'penmanship, for example, the goal of legibility need 
not -crowd out the aim of fostering esthetic appreciation 
and f the ideal of neatness; in the study of language the 
ainri of clear and correct expression need not conflict 
w" ith the cultivation of an appreciation of language; in 
i%rithmetic the interests of the practical life are not sacri- 
' ficed through the study of problems that introduce the 
learner to matters pertaining to astronomy, engineer- 
ing, or the firing of long-range guns; in history the study 
of political, social, and economic development is not 
made less significant if combined with a study of cam- 
paigns and battles in order to arouse enthusiasm for 
lofty ideals and splendid personal traits and to impart 
a sense of what our present-day institutions and tradi- 

1 Dewey, J. — Democracy and Education, p. 372. 



38 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

tions have cost in blood and suffering and treasure. The 
course of study may open up wide perspectives of possi- 
bilities to the learner, may give him new worlds for old; 
but, on the other hand, it may encourage the dis- 
position to foster one set of interests to the neglect of 
others. The fruits of such an education are: not, 
except incidentally, the catholicity of spirit? and 
tolerance of attitude which are so vital to the life of 
a democracy, but rather an intensification of [ the , 
very class spirit which is the ever-threatening damger 
of democratic institutions. i 

It is evident, then, that the ends of education requnire 
both intelligent selection of subject matter and soiund 
ideals of teaching. The social criterion of subjeect 
matter does not, it is true, make selection a simple aind 
easy matter. But we may remind ourselves that a:;ach 
community is already a ''going concern," which mt ^ans 
that there is an antecedent presumption in favor a of 
the subjects which have secured a place in the curricla- , 
lum. Subjects Uke the three R's, history, and geogra-5 
phy, occupy an impregnable position, because the expe- \ 
rience of the race has proved them to be invaluable 
and irreplaceable as agencies for widening or socializing | 
the life of the individual. The antecedent presumption, 
however, must not bhnd us to the fact that the curricu- (] 
lum tends to preserve subject matter long after it has 
outlived its greatest usefulness. The status of subject 
matter may change considerably with changes in social ' 
conditions. Among the Greeks the art of disputation 






EDUCATIONAL VALUES 39 

was an important part of education, owing to the con- 
ditions that determined political leadership. At a later 
time Latin became indispensable, since, without it, 
there could be no entrance to the realms of higher 
learning. In the course of time science presented claims 
that could not be ignored, while French and German 
likewise took on a new importance. Still more recently 
the development of trade relations with South America 
has given to Spanish and to the history of South 
American countries an importance which these subjects 
did not previously possess. New subjects are con- 
stantly clamoring for admission, whereas the old 
material tends to hold its place, either through sheer 
inertia or because of some superstition as to its magic 
efficacy for certain educational ends. There is, then, 
constant need of criticism and revision, and for this 
purpose the social criterion furnishes the only trust- 
worthy standard for evaluation. 

This criticism and revision, it should be noted, is 
required not only in making comparisons among dif- 
ferent subjects, but also within each of the different 
subjects. Here again the social criterion may serve as 
a guide. Subjects like history, geography, and the 
sciences should contribute to a better understanding 
of the social environment in which the pupil's lot hap- 
pens to be cast; and this fact has a bearing on the con- 
tent of these courses. Some material may lead to a 
much more significant widening of the environment 
than others. A biography of Lincoln, for example, 



40 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

would have a much greater value of this kind than the 
biography of a local hero. The former would serve to 
give a better understanding of the V^gro question, of 
the relation between North and South, of present-day 
American politics and of American traditions and ideals, 
in so far as these were influenced by the personality of 
Lincoln; in brief, it could be used for a better under- 
standing of an immense range of fact pertaining to the 
common life of the American people. In every subject 
there are wide differences in the relative values of the 
materials; and if these materials are taught without 
perspective, without any sense of relative values, edu- 
cation inevitably tends to become a burden and an 
affliction. 

The foregoing remarks lead us directly to the familiar 
conclusion that the most important element in educa- 
tion is the teacher. It is true that the right education 
requires a variety of subject matter. It is likewise true 
that selection of subject matter and reflection on 
method are not only useful but indispensable. But 
the teacher must breathe life into the dead bones, and 
it is the teacher's task to create and foster the spirit of 
open-minded inquiry, the attitude of sympathetic yet 
critical interest in all matters of human concern, which 
is the finest fruit of education. When this fact is appar- 
ently overlooked, and reliance is placed instead upon ma- 
chinery, one is tempted to agree with the spirit of Mr. 
Dooley's remark, to the effect that when you are sick it 
does not matter much whether you call in a physician 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 41 

or a Christian Science practitioner, as long as you have 
a good nurse. 

REFERENCES 

Bagley, W. C. — Educational Values, chs. 9-14. 

BoBBiTT, F. — The Curriculum, ch. 6. 

Bode, B. H. — "Educational Aims and Scientific Method"; School 

and Society, Vol. XI, p. 42. 
CouRSAULT, J. H. — The Principles of Education, ch. 12. 
Dewey, J. — Democracy and Education, chs. 3, 14, and 18. 
Moore, E. C. — What Is Education? ch. 5. 
Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education; United 

States Government Report (Bureau of Education Bulletin, 

1918, No. 35). 
Report of the Organizing and Advisory Committee 

for Curriculum Construction; Proceedings of H. S. Conference, 

University of lUinois, 1919, p. 24. 



CHAPTER III 

EDUCATION AND DEMOCRACY 

In the preceding chapter it was argued that educa- 
tional materials must be evaluated on the basis of what 
was called the social criterion. The expression was used 
with some hesitation, because the term ''social" has 
shown an unmistakable tendency to degenerate to the 
level of sinful jargon. We hear much nowadays to the 
effect that the meaning of education is fundamentally 
social, but the ambiguities of the term have made it 
more of a hindrance than a help to an understanding 
of education and of the significance of education for 
democratic ideals. However, the term ''social" has 
come to stay, and so our only practicable com'se is to 
try to make the word "safe for democracy." 

That the present emphasis upon the social embodies 
a new drift or tendency in education is doubtless a fact. 
^Mlether the word can be taken to indicate the precise 
direction of this tendency is, however, quite another 
matter. To all appearances the "social" is not so much 
a guiding principle as a slogan, the intellectual content 
of which is obscured by a haze of emotional appeal. 
Analysis of the concept has but a short way to go before 
it comes in sight of an alarming diversity of meanings. 
The social, we find, is sometimes identified with the 

42 



EDUCATION AND DEMOCRACY 43 

likemindedness that springs from interaction with our 
fellows. By this standard the lonely trapper or pro- 
spector is a social being by virtue of the fact that he has 
learned to prepare his flapjacks in the manner that is 
characteristic of all his tribe. Again a person is social 
in so far as his activities have reference to the attitudes 
or activities of other persons. From this standpoint 
the attempt to '^show off," to make an impression on 
others, is a social activity, and a prize fight or a hold- 
up is properly regarded as a social event. The con- 
trasting term here is not the antisocial, but the non- 
social. Most frequently, perhaps, the term ''social" is 
applied to cooperative activities that are directed 
towards a conamon end. In this sense the Allies in the 
recent war were social in their relations to one another, 
but not in their relations to Germany. When used in 
this sense the contrasting term is not nonsocial, but 
antisocial. But we are also inclined to describe the 
attitude of the sincere statesman or reformer as social 
because inspired by the desire to promote the well-being 
of others, even when those who are to be benefited 
resent what is done in their behalf and unite against 
their would-be benefactor. That is, a man may be 
social, even though he stands all alone. He is called 
social not merely because his conduct has reference to 
the attitudes or activities of others, but because his 
conduct is the expression of a concern for the interests 
of others. Taken in this sense, social conduct is identi- 
cal with moT^l conduct. Unless the word ''social" is used 



44 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

with discrimination, it is bound to prove less serviceable 
as a means to insight than as a cover for our academic 
sins. 

The common element in these different meanings, 
it will be observed, consists in the fact that we learn 
the meaning of our environment by discovering what 
things mean to others. As a result of such learning, 
the individual is enabled to use things for his own pur- 
poses, to act with reference to others either by co- 
operating with them or by exploiting or opposing them, 
and, finally, to shape his conduct towards the end of 
conserving a maximum of the values or interests that 
may be involved in a given situation. The different 
meanings may perhaps be taken as a rough indication 
of the steps in the development through which the 
normal individual passes in becoming a fully developed 
member of his community. At the outset the infant 
learns without much apparent sense of either coopera- 
tion or opposition; presently the reference to the dis- 
position and purposes of others becomes expUcitly 
'developed; and gradually there emerges a dawning 
sense of responsibility for human welfare, whether of 
friend or of foe, and whether the members of the group 
express approval or disapproval. To put it differently, 
these different levels suggest that the term ''social" 
designates both a fact and an ideal. In so far as learn- 
ing is conditioned upon grasping the meaning enter- 
tained by others, the social nature of education is a 
plain fact. It is social because the learner must adopt 






EDUCATION AND DEMOCRACY 45 

the standpoint or attitude of someone else in order to 
comprehend the meaning of what is going on. The pur- 
poses of others are thus transformed to some extent into 
purposes of the learner. The point is exemplified in the 
story of the village idiot, who managed, after everybody 
else had failed, to find a horse that had strayed away. 
The matter was not at all difficult, as he explained after- 
wards; he had simply imagined himself to be a horse, 
and then had gone where a horse would naturally go. 
This ability to enter sympathetically into whatever is 
going on is a striking characteristic of children, and is 
an indispensable condition for learning. But if educa- 
tion is to achieve a maximum of growth, it is necessary 
to cultivate deliberately this attitude of sympathetic 
response to a constantly expanding range of interests. 
The abihty to enter into a wide variety of human in- 
terests with spontaneous and intelligent sympathy is 
a difficult achievement, and from this standpoint the 
social is not a fact but an ideal. 

This ideal of education is expressed in the fine classic 
sentiment: Homo sum; humani nil a me alienum puto. 
It is this quality of spirit that makes James's great 
Psychology so pecuharly a ''human document.'' An 
outstanding trait of this work is the readiness with 
which the author responds to the endless variety of 
human impulses, from the level of the roue to the level 
of the saint, with all that lies between. What these 
impulses mean in actual conduct is intimately under- 
stood because the author dramatizes them in his imagi- 



46 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

nation, as the novelist lives out the lives of the charac- 
ters in his story. Out of association and cooperation 
with others there normally grows an appreciation of 
the purposes that others seek to realize, a sympathetic 
understanding of their struggles, their successes and 
their defeats. This insight may abide, even when the 
conduct of others is such as to arouse our disapproval. 
The prodigal son, for example, was doubtless a head- 
strong and erring lad, who should have behaved differ- 
ently, but the ''human quality" of the parable lies pre- 
cisely in the fact that we can appreciate so thoroughly 
both the temptation and the disillusionment. We can 
see how it all happened, if we only care to make the 
effort; we can understand, even if we cannot condone. 
A complete antithesis is the parable of the Pharisee, 
who thanked God that he was not like other men. The 
Pharisee was too much absorbed in his own righteous- 
ness ever to understand why other men acted as they 
did, in much the same way that people who have for- 
gotten that they were ever young themselves fail com- 
pletely to understand the conduct of children. Yet it 
is precisely this sort of understanding which is needed 
to pass a just judgment and to make possible a higher 
righteousness than the righteousness of the Pharisee. 
This generosity of spirit is as far removed from maudlin 
charity as from plain vindictiveness. This ability to 
share imaginatively in all sorts of experiences, to regard 
nothing human as foreign to oneself, is just another 
name for that enrichment of life which functions in 



EDUCATION AND DEMOCRACY 47 

the life of the individual as a moral ideal and in the 
institutions and practices of society as the ideal of 
democracy. 

In order to trace the bearing of the foregoing discus- 
sion upon the concept of democracy, we may remind 
ourselves that, as a rule, ideals of conduct are deter- 
mined largely by the accident of environment. If a boy 
engages in a fight and afterwards finds himself praised 
on all hands for his courage and endurance, the effect 
upon him will naturally be a glorification of fighting. 
The case is very different if public opinion takes the 
view that his conduct was vulgar and a disgrace to his 
family. The feature or aspect of the affair that is thus 
made prominent in his consciousness by the reaction 
of others tends to become more potent in the control 
of conduct, while other features lose their power. In 
case public opinion is unanimous, this result is virtually 
inevitable. The standards of the community are thus 
absorbed until they become bone of his bone and flesh 
of his flesh. A boy may thus learn to scorn sedentary 
occupations and to look upon interest in flowers, birds, 
and intellectual pursuits as unmanly ; his attitude being 
something like that of the person who considered the 
writing of books a trifling occupation for a grown-up 
man. With a different environment he will discount 
physical prowess and attach greater importance to 
other things. In any case, the acquisition of ideals is, 
so far forth, an enrichment of life, but it must be remem- 
bered that the enrichment may carry with it a very 



48 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

pronounced limitation. Certain things may be per- 
sistently ignored, so that development in those direc- 
tions becomes virtually impossible. Most civilized 
communities are sufficiently diversified to furnish at 
least some encouragement to a wide variety of tenden- 
cies, but, given a community with narrow interests and 
outlook, the tendency to perpetuate its ideals from gen- 
eration to generation is very strong. 

''Why does a savage group perpetuate savagery, and 
a civilized group civilization? Doubtless the first 
answer to occur to mind is because savages are savages ; 
beings of low-grade intelligence and perhaps defective 
moral sense. But careful study has made it doubtful 
whether their native capacities are appreciably inferior 
to those of civilized man. It has made it certain that 
native differences are not sufficient to account for 
differences in culture. In a sense the mind of savage 
peoples is an effect, rather than a cause, of their back- 
ward institutions. Their social activities are such as 
to restrict their objects of attention and interest, and 
hence to limit the stimuli to mental development. 
. . . We start not so much with superior capacities 
as with superior stimuli for evocation and direction of 
our capacities. The savage deals largely with crude 
stimuli; we have weighted stimuli. ^^ ^ 

In a state of savagery or in a backward, static com- 
munity, the individual is indeed ''socialized" in the 
sense that he is trained to share in the spiritual goods 

* Dewey, J. — Democracy and Education, p. 44. 



EDUCATION AND DEMOCRACY 49 

of the community, however meager these may be, but 
he is at the same time fenced in from the realm of values 
or appreciations that might be his, if the community 
were so organized as to provide more incentives for 
varied development and if it encouraged and cultivated 
connections with other communities. Within the com- 
munity there may be an intensive cultivation of de- 
sirable mental and moral qualities, but in so far as the 
attitude towards other groups or societies is negative, 
there is an absence of democracy. Different societies 
or groups may be thus exclusive when they live side 
by side, or even when the members occupy the same 
general territory. An extreme instance of this is fur- 
nished by the class of professional criminals, who main- 
tain a form of social life in which the good and the bad 
are strangely blended. ''The professional criminal is 
peculiar in the sense that he lives a very intense emo- 
tional life. He is isolated in the community. He is in 
it, but not of it. His social life — for all men are social 
— is narrow, it is extremely tense. He lives the life 
of warfare and has the psychology of the warrior. 
. . . Loyalty, fearlessness, generosity, willingness to 
sacrifice one^s self, perseverance in the face of persecu- 
tion, hatred of the common enemy — these are the 
elements that maintain the morale, but all of them are 
pointed against the community as a whole. ^' ^ 
While the relation of the criminal class to the rest 

1 Tannenbaum, F. — 'Trison Democracy" ; Atlantic Monthly, October, 
1920. 



50 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

of society is happily an extreme case, it nevertheless 
furnishes a certain parallel to the caste or class system 
which prevailed so widely in the past and which estab- 
lished more or less rigid barriers between different strata 
of society. An organization of this sort tends, from the 
nature of the case, to emphasize both solidarijLy within 
a social rank and the difference between rank and rank. 
Those who occupy a different status are, ipso facto, 
creatures of a different clay; they are either super- 
human or subhuman, as the case may be, but in any 
event they are actuated by motives and considerations 
which those outside of that class do not seriously at- 
tempt to understand and share. The upper classes are 
credited with a refinement and nobility which it is the 
privilege of others to admire, but which it would be 
sheer affectation to imitate or pretend to possess; and, 
on the other hand, the *' lower classes,'^ with their coarse 
standards, need not be treated with the same considera- 
tion by the elect. The brutalities that grew up under 
this system are less an exhibition of deliberate cruelty 
than of the failure to realize that ^'a man^s a man for a^ 
that.'' If we once place certain of our fellowmen on a 
spiritual plane that is remote from our own, the incen- 
tives and inhibitions that spring from appreciative 
understanding no longer operate, and persons otherwise 
endowed with generous and sympathetic impulses be- 
come capable of the most amazing cruelty. It is 
against just this failure to ^^ visualize" our neighbor's 
situation, to ''put one's self in his place," that Shylock 



EDUCATION AND DEMOCRACY 51 

utters his indignant protest. ^'Hath not a Jew eyes? 
Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affec- 
tions, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the 
same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by 
the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter 
and summer as a Christian is?^' 

It is true that this system of social organization is no 
longer held so widely or so rigidly as in former times. 
To an American, in particular, the suggestion that he 
should yield precedence to ^'his betters" is apt to have 
an unpleasant connotation. The fundamental article 
of our political creed is faith in the common man. Our 
political system is based on the recognition of all men 
as ^'free and equal" ; yet it has, in fact, developed in the 
direction of an individualism which has, in some re- 
spects, borne much the same kind of fruit as the caste 
system. The growth of industry and commerce has 
tended towards the unification of certain groups on 
the basis of common interests, but at the same time the 
different groups have grown apart, so that the attitude 
has frequently developed into cynical disregard and 
even hostility. This state of things has resulted in 
exploitation, grafting, and profiteering; it has be- 
queathed to us an ominous problem of capital and 
labor; and it has even developed a sort of creed, which 
justifies the practice of ^^ charging all that the traffic 
will bear," of ^'getting while the getting is good," and 
i in general of conducting oneself in accordance with the 
maxim that '^ Business is business." In all this there is 



52 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

a conspicuous absence of the spirit of democracy, and 
also a new reminder of the obligation that rests upon 
education. 

As the foregoing discussion has intimated, the notion 
of democracy implies a certain relation among the 
members of a given group and also a certain relation 
between the group and other groups. This is the line 
of approach that is suggested by Dewey, who gives the 
following statement of the meaning of democracy: ^^In 
any given social group whatever, even in a gang of 
thieves, we find some interests held in common, and we 
find a certain amount of interaction and cooperative 
intercourse with other groups. From these two traits 
we derive our standard. How numerous and varied 
are the interests which are consciously shared? How 
full and free is the interplay with other forms of asso- 
ciation?" In the answer to these questions we find the 
^'measure for the worth of any given mode of social life." ^ 

In proportion as interests are common, they tend to 
exercise control over the behavior of the group ; and 
in proportion as interaction among different groups is 
free and unimpeded, the different groups develop flexi- 
bility for continuous readjustment in the direction of 
conserving and promoting relations of cooperation or 
free give-and-take. What is significant in a social organ- 
ization is, first of all, its spirit, the direction in which 
it is consciously moving. There is no doubt that 
democracy, |as above defined, has grown considerably 
* Dewey, J. — Democracy and Education, p. 96. 



EDUCATION AND DEMOCRACY 53 

in the course of time. Much of this growth, however, 
has come about without reference to democracy as a 
desirable ideal ; it has been a sort of by-product of the 
struggle for specific rights and interests. The attain- 
ment of a broadly social point of view is not a spon- 
taneous and natural result, but is, in large measure, an 
outcome that has behind it the sweat and agony of 
conflict, resulting in a series of compromises, which 
had the effect of paving the way for the fostering of 
a body of common interests and thus advancing the 
cause of democracy. Governments have learned to 
take a more active interest in the prosperity and con- 
tentment of the masses; the upper classes have culti- 
vated a more democratic spirit of noblesse oblige; em- 
ployers have developed a keener sense of responsibihty 
for the welfare of their employees; and public service 
corporations are more disposed to regard themselves 
as servants of the public. In general the develop- 
ment has been in the direction of giving to all the 
members of the community, singly and collectively, 
a higher sense of their dignity as human beings and of 
their duties and obligations as component parts of the 
social order. 

In the past, democracy connoted chiefly political 
democracy, because it was so conspicuously the politi- 
cal power of the despot that limited opportunity in so 
many directions and constituted itself the chief bulwark 
of special privilege. In more recent times, however, it 
has become increasingly plain that equality before the 



54 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

law, equalization of taxation, protection of life and 
property, and similar matters constitute only a part of 
what is meant by democracy. If there is to be genuine 
incentive for initiative and for the development of 
talent, if there is to be a reascHiable equality of oppor- 
tunity, the door must be opened still further; our 
political democracy must become still more 1a social 
democracy. There must be protection, not only of life 
and property, but protection against exploitation; 
there must be a reasonable distribution of the world's 
goods and the world's drudgery, and a reasonable 
chance to start in life without the handicaps that spring 
from imperfect educational facilities and from surround- 
ings that impair physical and spiritual health. The con- 
tent of the ideal grows as we proceed; and with 
each advance the discrepancy between the actual and 
the ideal becomes all the more evident. Government 
''of the people, by the people, for the people," means 
much more than it did in the days of Lincoln; but this 
growth does not mean that we have already attained, 
or that we were already perfect, but at most that we 
press towards the mark for the prize of our high calling, 
in order that perchance we may sometime become a 
truly democratic people. * 

During the past few years much emphasis has been 
given to the need of ''Americanizing" the large foreign 
element within our borders. That such a need exists 
there can be no question; nor, for that matter, is this 
need confined to the foreign born. As to the meaning 



EDUCATION AND DEMOCRACY 55 

of Americanism, however, there is apparently con- 
siderable confusion. Sometimes the general idea seems 
to be that Americanism consists in the inability to speak 
any language except English and a complacent con- 
tempt for the institutions and practices of other coun- 
tries. On this plane Americanism is equivalent to 
Jingoism. If Americanism is to mean something wor- 
thy, we must take our clue from the spirit of American 
history and American institutions. This nation, as 
Lincoln has said, was dedicated to the proposition that 
all men are created equal. Its fundamental political 
tenets are democracy and an abiding faith in the com- 
mon man. The concept of democracy, therefore, offers 
itself as the appropriate point of departure for the inter- 
pretation of the meaning of Americanism. 

If we take this concept as our guiding principle, it is 
clear that Americanism calls for an understanding of 
our community life. As this life goes on about us, how- 
ever, it is a mixture of good and bad. It contains much 
that inspires every decent citizen with feelings of humil- 
iation and shame. Unless the process of initiating the 
individual into this community life brings with it some 
ability in discriminating between what is good and what 
is bad, the net gain is doubtful. That is, there must be 
training in the ideals by which this community life may 
be understood and evaluated. Certain traits or fea- 
tures of this community life must be pointed out and 
explained in their bearing on a larger, richer, common 
life. These outstanding features are to be found in the 



56 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

lives of its great men, in its literature and art, in its 
great public movements, and the countless ways in which 
what we sometimes call the spirit of the nation strives 
to become articulate. These concrete embodiments of 
achievements and aspirations give the learner a vision 
of a larger life that may be his, a life that contains 
beauty and a wider fellowship. When ideals take on 
tangible form they appear before us, not as the crea- 
tures of our own minds, but as a revelation of the life 
that is all about us. They lift us to a higher plane; 
they engage our admiration, our sympathy, our affec- 
tion. The life of Lincoln can tell the foreigner more that 
he needs to know about the America to which he is 
asked to transfer his allegiance, than all our vaunting 
complacency or our courses in the duties of citizenship. 
When America is seen by him as the opportunity and 
the responsibility of a common life, it becomes his 
America, and the transformation is under way. 

If Americanization is to be really worth while, the 
stranger within our gates must learn to see the ideal 
meaning behind all the turmoil and uproar of our 
national life. It is the function of education, first of all, 
to transmit and clarify this meaning. In a sense all this 
is perhaps an idealization of America, but it is not an 
idealization which slurs over or huddles out of sight 
whatever does not happen to fit into the picture. It 
is an idealization which sees the profounder meaning 
of both past and present in its bearing upon the libera- 
tion and enrichment of human life, which reveres the 



EDUCATION AND DEMOCRACY 57 

aspirations and struggles of men whose faces were set 
in the direction of democracy, even though the distant 
scene was but dimly apprehended and not clearly en- 
visaged by them. It is an idealization which trans- 
figures the present by the revelation of its possibilities 
for ministering to the soul of man. At the same time 
it sets in a clearer light the distinctive development that 
has been undergone by democracy on this continent. 
The temper of our national mind was fashioned by the 
traditions of Puritanism and of the frontier, by the 
struggle for independence and the Civil War, by the 
mingling of nationalities and the possession of resources 
that have long made America synonymous with oppor- 
tunity. Out of these conditions there was developed 
whatever is distinctive in our American civilization, 
such as our emphasis upon initiative, independence, 
and efficiency, our peculiar form of humor, our reverence 
for women, and our system of public education. All 
this provides a spiritual background, a fund of ideals 
and appreciations, which constitutes the common heri- 
tage of all Americans. 

Unless the foreigner in our midst can sense the fact, 
in some way or other, that America means the spirit 
of democracy struggling for a more complete and ade- 
quate expression, he is scarcely to be blamed if he rates 
it as inferior to the civilization of his native land, which 
he has learned to appreciate and love. He feels, and 
sometimes justly, that he has a truer sense of the values 
of life than his native-born neighbors, whose patriotism 



58 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

may be nothing more than a bhnd group spirit, unen- 
lightened by worthy ideals. If Americanism means a 
love for our traditions and ideals, it is not incompatible 
with an appreciation of what is admirable in the civili- 
zation of other countries. On the contrary, such an 
appreciation makes a man all the better as a citizen. It 
is a real tragedy in the lives of many immigrants that 
they never learn the meaning of Americanism; and, 
what is worse, their children may fail to learn this 
meaning and at the same time have nothing but con- 
tempt for the civilization in which their parents were 
reared. The children of immigrants frequently show 
grat eagerness to become Americanized. But what 
they take to be Americanism consists all too often of 
less desirable traits, such as swaggering independence 
and ' 'smartness" in matters of business. Such '^ Ameri- 
canization" is likely to mean, not progress, but de- 
generation, and it is here that education has a peculiar 
obligation. 

A characteristic trait of the American people is its 
faith in education. Our public school system is the 
embodiment of the belief that the individual is entitled 
to enter upon his social heritage and that the cultiva- 
tion of a body of common interests is essential to the 
life and security of the nation. On the whole the ten- 
dency of our educational system has been in the direc- 
tion of the democratic ideal and away from the ideal of 
caste or class. Yet it must be admitted that the demo- 
cratic ideal is not always clearly and steadily envisaged, 



EDUCATION AND DEMOCRACY 59 

and that our educational achievements do not always 
conform to the spirit of real democracy. As a nation we 
have not been remarkably successful in understanding 
the psychology of other people, and as individuals we 
easily become absorbed in material pursuits, to the 
neglect of other values. For this result our educational 
system cannot wholly disclaim responsibility. If 
national history becomes a matter of self-glorification, 
or if earning power becomes our chief measure of suc- 
cess, the result of education becomes, to that extent, a 
source of division and not of cooperation and mutual 
understanding. Again, if education is mainly a matter 
of rote and drill, if it touches no vital enthusiasms, and 
arouses no deep-seated sympathies, there is no enrich- 
ment of life, except incidentally, and no development 
of that humane, tolerant, broadly sympathetic temper 
of mind which we call the democratic attitude. The 
results achieved by our educational system have been, 
to a considerable extent, random and incidental, and 
fall short of what we might reasonably expect if our 
educational activities were pervaded and directed by 
a conscious ideal. 

It is worth while to remind ourselves that there is 
no inherent magic in education by virtue of which it 
automatically promotes the ends of democracy. Edu- 
cation is a tool that can be made, and has been made, 
to serve many masters. It can deepen lines of cleavage 
and can consolidate one class as against other classes or 
one interest as against other interests. Education was 



60 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

never more widespread or more effectively conducted 
than in recent times, yet it did not prevent the World 
War; it made this war more terrible than any that 
preceded it. There is no good reason to think that more 
education will, in itself, safeguard democracy or safe- 
guard us from other catastrophic wars. To bring about 
this result we must have a different quaUty of education, 
which means education conducted in a different spirit 
and with different standards of value. 

It appears, then, that society and education stand in 
a relation of reciprocal cause and effect. The character 
of a given society determines the character of its educa- 
tional system, and the character of this system, in turn, 
determines the character of the society. At first sight 
this looks Uke a hopeless circle. If a society were not 
subject to changes arising from other than educational 
sources, this would presumably be the case. But in 
this world of change new conditions are constantly 
arising, which call for corresponding changes on the 
side of education. The development of commerce and 
industry, for example, brought with it a new social and 
political consciousness on the part of the various groups 
or classes. With such changes there comes a demand 
for vocational training, and also a demand for a type 
of training that has a more direct bearing on social and 
economic conditions than the older forms of education, 
which were the expression of the needs and the organi- 
zation of an earlier social order. There is always some 
change taking place, so that the social order never be- 



EDUCATION AND DEMOCRACY 61 

comes entirely petrified, but always retains a certain 
degree of flexibility. Education, consequently, tends 
to be somewhat broader than it would ordinarily be if 
classes or occupations were fixed and unchanging. And 
this is precisely where education finds its unique obli- 
gation and opportunity. Its proper function is not 
merely to preserve the achievements of the past, but 
to prepare the way for further changes. In other words, 
education must cultivate the knowledge and the temper 
of mind by means of which progress can be made to 
depend less upon confiict and haphazard adjustment 
and more upon intelligent cooperation on the basis of 
mutual understanding or sympathetic insight. This 
does not mean that the schools are to be used as a means 
of propaganda, but as a means of cultivating an interest 
in the things that pertain to our common life and an 
appreciation of the fact that we are ^ ^members one of 
another.^' If we make the social criterion our measure 
of educational values, we shall be employing the most 
effective method for making education an agency both 
for preserving the achievements of the past and for 
promoting social progress and reform. 

What counts, in short, is not only the materials that 
are taught, but the spirit in which they are taught, the 
spirit that is made to pervade our educational system. 
A system is not democratic simply because it is made 
available to everybody or because it is administered 
without distinction of persons. In a Spartan scheme 
of education all are included and all are treated equally, 



62 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

but it is not democratic because the individual is sub- 
ordinated, is made a means to an end; and that end, 
the State. . To be truly democratic , education must treat 
the individual himself as the end and set itself the task 
of preparing him for that intellectual and emotional 
sharing in the life and affairs of men which embodies 
the spirit of the Golden Rule. In proportion as common 
interests are permitted to outweigh special interests, the 
individual is becoming humanized and the successive 
adjustments of life will be made in the direction of de- 
mocracy and in accordance with the needs of an ex- 
panding life. 

REFERENCES 

Bagley, W. C. — Educational Values, ch. 14. 
Betts, G. H. — Social Principles of Education, chs. 2, 5. 
BoBBiTT, F. — The Curriculum, chs. 11 and 12. 
CouRSAULT, J. H. — Principles of Education, ch. 10. 
Dewey, J. — Democracy and Education, ch. 7. 

— The School and Society. 
Dewey, J. and Tufts, J. H. — Ethics, ch. 20. 
King, I. — Education for Social Efficiency, chs. 1, 2. 
Mecklin, J. M. — Introduction to Social Ethics, ch. 1. 
Snedden, D. — Educational Readjustment, ch. 3. 




CHAPTER IV 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF IDEALS 

Up tc the present point our chief concern has been 
with the proposition that the value of education is to 
be measured by the ideals which it cultivates. Ideals 
determine the quality of the individual life, and they 
are the forces that, for good or for evil, move the world. 
The importance of ideals warrants a more detailed dis- 
cussion of their nature and development in the experi- 
ence of the individual. 

The most promising approach to this subject is to 
trace the development of ideals out of antecedent ex- 
perience. As was noted earlier, the child comes into 
the world with a set of preformed tendencies or im- 
pulses. To some extent these tendencies are the com- 
mon heritage of childhood. Winking, crying, walking, 
smiling, clutching, and the like, are clearly inborn ten- 
dencies. Practically all children delight in such ac- 
tivities as wading through water or mud, rolling a ball 
or hoop, building with blocks, walking on the coping 
of a low wall, and playing in the sand. There are, 
however, certain observable differences in children, 
which are likewise due to native endowment. Some 
children have a passion for teasing the cat, for work- 
ing with tools, or for taking to pieces every bit of 

63 



64 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

mechanism that they can lay their hands on; while 
others show the same predilection for playing with 
dolls or toy soldiers, for music, or for drawing and 
painting. The original tendencies vary with different 
individuals, and they also vary with the same indi- 
vidual, with growth and opportunity. As the child 
grows into the adult, new interests appear, such as 
debating, writing poetry, earning money, or engaging 
in politics.' These interests are built on native en- 
dowments. The child is father of the man. 

So far, however, we have not come upon that dis- 
tinctive form of experience which we call ideals. What 
has just been said of the child might also be said, with 
certain reservations, of the lower animals. Dogs too, 
for example, exhibit certain inborn traits or tendencies, 
such as barking, burying bones, and chasing cats. 
Moreover, dogs may display marked individuality. 
A dog may show a strong Uking for hunting and an 
equally strong aversion to strangers; he may be 
friendly or surly, timid or venturesome. So far, then, 
there seems to be no outstanding difference. Such a 
difference appears, however, when we note the fact 
that human beings can reflect upon their behavior and 
desires, can analyze and abstract. A dog may chase 
every cat that comes within his field of vision, but he 
does not seem to spend any time in thinking it over; 
he does not abstract the common quality from his 
various experiences and set up "cat-chasing" as his 
iCf. Riley's poem, "A Life Lesson." 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF IDEALS 65 

ideal. Yet this is precisely the sort of thing that is 
done by human beings. We form concepts and then 
we use these concepts as instruments with which to 
analyze situations so as to discover their possibilities, 
and we convert concepts into ideals for the guidance 
of conduct. 

These ideals represent values or interests which we 
seek to realize or to maintain and with which we iden- 
tify ourselves. The development of ideals is, in fact, 
the same thing as the development of the self. The 
content of the self is furnished by the ideals or inter- 
ests that we cherish. This is easily verified by observ- 
ing the way in which we ordinarily refer to the self. 
Very often, it is true, the self is identified with the 
body, but this is by no means always the case. If a 
man says, '^He struck me,'' the ^^me" in question is 
clearly the body. But if he says, ^'He ruined me'' 
(financially), the "me" is identified with certain eco- 
nomic interests; if he says, '^He attacked me" (in the 
newspapers), the "me" is presumably his reputation; 
if he says, "He supported me" (in a political campaign) 
the "me" is the political aim to which he aspires. 

It is evident from this account that the self is not 
one but many. A man may be one kind of man at 
home, another in his office, a third at his club. In each 
case he lives up to different standards, maintains a dif- 
ferent set of interests. The number of selves which it 
is possible to recognize in connection with any given 
individual is indefinitely large. Ordinarily some of 



66 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

these interests dominate others, in the sense that 
when a conflict occurs they have the right of way. 
The lesser is then sacrificed to the greater. But the 
dominant interest is not the same in all individuals. 
With some it is, perhaps, '^wine, women, and song"; 
in the case of John Knox it was indicated by his 
prayer, ^'Lord, give me Scotland or I die"; others 
again may agree with the poet in the sentiment: 

It fortifies my soul to know 
That though I perish, truth is so. 

Every individual, then, normally possesses a variety 
of selves. As James remarks, the average man would 
fain be ^'handsome and fat and well-dressed and a 
great athlete, and make a million a year, be a wit, a 
hon-vivant, and a lady-killer, as well as a philosopher; 
a philanthropist, statesman, warrior, and African ex- 
plorer, as well as a Hone-poet' and a saint." ^ In a 
sense he is more of a tenement house of desires than a 
unitary personality. Yet there is an underlying unity 
in that these different interests or selves constantly 
require adjustment and harmonization. A man's pas- 
sion for first editions, or for automobiles, may be Hm- 
ited by the condition of his purse or by the opinion of 
his family or community. He then has to decide how 
far he is wiUing to go. As long as the decision is not 
made, he does not know clearly what he wants; which 
is just another way of saying that his selfhood is in 

1 James, W. — Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, p. 309. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF IDEALS 67 

process of growth and change. In other words, the 
self is not a fixed quantity or static thing; it is not an 
inherited possession, but an achievement. It expands 
in one direction and contracts in another; it is in the 
making all the while. 

Since life is a constant process of adjusting con- 
flicting interests, it is to be expected that no one 
can live a perfectly consistent life, no matter by what 
standard he may be judged. The most devout saint 
has his seasons of backsliding, and the vilest sinner 
will, on occasion, rise to unexpected heights of virtue. 
Circumstances may conspire to bring out what is most 
degrading or most ennobling in man. These crises in 
the moral life indicate that the organization of conduct 
is never a completed task, but must constantly be un- 
dertaken anew. New conditions give fresh strength 
to certain impulses as against those which ordinarily 
prevail in such matters. As a rule, we are perhaps 
honest, cautious, conservative, tolerant, or generous, 
but the unusual situation arises and our more or less 
habitual reactions are put to the test. The individual 
becomes a house divided against itself. In the litera- 
ture of morality and religion the conflict is sometimes 
represented as a struggle between a higher and a lower 
self, but at other times the ^^real" self is identified 
with one of the conflicting tendencies, while the other 
is treated as an alien, external force. The ^'real" or 
'Hrue" self is perhaps found in the better or higher 
impulse, while the evil suggestion is ascribed to the 



68 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

promptings of the devil or to the pernicious influence of 
the social environment.^ Or it may be that the evil 
thoughts and desires are accepted as peculiarly our 
own, whereas the better impulses are attributed to a 
benign power, because they are supposed to be natu- 
rally foreign to the corrupt and sinful soul of man. This 
view has found a classic expression in the doctrine of total 
depravity. As a matter of fact, of course, all these con- 
flicting tendencies owe their being equally to the constitu- 
tion of the individual. The struggles and conflicts are in- 
evitable incidents in the history of a changing self; they 
are the growing-pains which mark the progress from 
one moral level to another. Children and the lower 
animals live their lives more or less in subjection to 
whim and caprice, with reflective judgment either en- 
tirely absent or at all events reduced to a minimum ; 
consequently the concept of selfhood seems some- 
what inappropriate as applied to them. Whenever 
interests are not abstracted and set up as ideals, we 
hesitate to speak of a self at all. 

It was said a moment ago that the average person 
has an indefinite number of ideals by which his con- 
duct is determined. We normally desire friendship, 
wealth, reputation, influence, social recognition, and 
hosts of other things. Some of our ideals are more 
general in character than others, so that when a con- 
flict of interests arises, appeal may be made to them. , 

1 This latter conception is associated particularly with the name of 
Rousseau. See also Shelley's poem, "Queen Mab." 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF IDEALS 69 

A man is perhaps interested in civic improvement, but 

^ his business is very absorbing. In such a case the 

extra demand upon his time may be reenforced by 

"i reminders of what is required by the ideal of good citi- 

/ zenship or loyalty to his community. He may find it 

disadvantageous to tell the truth or to observe the 

I'l law, but may be impelled thereunto by the ideal of 
truthfulness or obedience to authority. Ideals, such 

■ as truthfulness, obedience, loyalty, patriotism, and 
courtesy, are indispensable agencies for discovering 
the significance of new situations. They direct our 

' attention and tell us what to look for, so that con- 

' duct may be guided, not by habit or by impulse, but 

' by the perception of meanings. 

Guidance by ideals, however, may take place in two 
very different ways. When a new situation arises, we 

i may discover that a certain ideal is involved, and 
thereupon proceed to act, with no reference to any 
other values that may likewise be involved in it. The 

I boy who stood on the burning deck refused to consider 
anything but the ideal of obedience, and so he just 
stood there, ^whence all with sense had fled.' The con- 
scientious objector may rest his whole case on the 
command, "Thou shalt not kill,'' with no regard for any 
other aspects of the case. Or a citizen may respond 
unhesitatingly to the commands of a military adven- 
turer, like Frederick the Great or Napoleon, as a matter 
of duty and patriotism, it being taken for granted that 
'^to doubt would be disloyalty, to question would be 



70 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

sin." When ideals are used in this way, they cease 
to be a means of acting intelUgently, and become a sort 
of fetish, which may be used to justify ahnost any 
kind of irrational conduct. 

The point at issue, it should be noted, is not whether 
we should be loyal to our ideals, but whether we should 
be loyal to one ideal at the expense of the rest. It 
would generally be conceded, for example, that there 
may be exceptional occasions when it would not be 
wrong to make a statement that did not conform to 
the facts, or to violate the law by taking what belongs 
to someone else. Moreover, such conduct may be dic- 
tated, not by disregard for moral values, but by con- 
cern for them. If conduct is to be rational or intelli- 
gent, it is necessary to use our ideals so as to discover 
the values that are at stake in a given situation, so 
that we may seek to conserve those values to the best 
of our ability. Blind obedience to an ideal is funda- 
mentally unintelligent, since it means a disregard of 
other possible values. We may be so subservient to 
the ideal of charity that we consider it our duty to 
feed every tramp that comes along, without regard to 
the effect of this practice on society in general. We 
may be so blindly submissive to the claims of ''lib- 
erty'' that an attempt to limit working hours will 
seem to be an infringement on the right of the work- 
man to work himself to death in order to hold his job; 
or so regardful of property rights as to be insensitive 
to the injustices of economic distribution. In some 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF IDEALS 71 

cases this unquestioning loyalty to an ideal springs 
from an inability to understand the whole situation. 
In other cases it may be due to indifference, as in the 
case of people who pride themselves on telling the 
truth, or being plain-spoken, when, in fact, they are 
simply callous and brutal. Or again, this one-sided 
devotion to an ideal may be an expression of self- 
interest. It is usually easy for a selfish person to per- 
suade himself that an unusual expenditure of money 
or energy for some worthy philanthropic purpose 
would be disloyalty to his family or to his business. 
Ideals are no substitute for thinking; if used properly, 
they are means for thinking effectively when the occa- 
sion requires it. When ideals are treated as ready- 
made and final, it means that development has stopped; 
if treated as agencies for analyzing new situations, they 
lead to new insights by which these same ideals be- 
come enlarged and transformed. 

■ How this comes about appears when we consider the 
{ process of making a choice. When a conflict of inter- 
lests arises, so that reflection becomes necessary, the 
^person concerned is unable to decide offhand what it 
! is that he really wants or what would be really right 
: and good. Hence it is necessary to canvass the situa- 
Ition. He may have political preferment offered to 
Jhim, if he will make some concessions to the platform 
;iof the party; or a business opportunity may come to 
I him through connection with a firm or corporation of 
( whose methods he does not entirely approve. Which 



72 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

course shall he follow? He does not wish to do wrong, 
but neither does he wish to be foolishly doctrinaire and 
unpractical. Would it really mean a sacrifice of prin- 
ciple? Perhaps an examination of all the circum- 
stances connected with the case will show that no sac- 
rifice of principle is involved, in somewhat the same 
way that a person who considers it wrong to tell 
a lie may find that misrepresentation to a sick or in- 
sane person is not a sacrifice of principle. In this case 
it is evident that reflection leads to a new insight, to 
the creation of a new ideal of integrity or of truthful- 
ness. Or reflection may show that the proposed con- 
duct is morally wrong, but the individual concerned 
may decide that it does not pay to abide by moral 
standards. In this case there emerges a new and evil 
conception of practicality or worldly wisdom. In any 
event, the storm and stress gives birth to a new ideal 
of conduct, and it is in this way that the individual 
advances from one moral level to another. 

Situations of the kind just mentioned are called moral 
situations because they involve a choice as to what kind 
of self the individual shall seek to realize. There are 
many choices that have no reference to a new self- 
hood or a new scale of values, but simply to the selec- 
tion of the means to an end. When a business man 
tries to decide which of two investments will be the 
more profitable, or when an architect seeks to de- 
termine which type of construction will be most 
suitable for a building, with regard to its appear- 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF IDEALS 73 

ance or to the purpose for which the building is in- 
tended, the choice is not a matter of creating a new 
moral standard. The person concerned is not trying 
to decide which sort of self he shall cultivate. The end 
is already determined, and the trouble lies in the selec- 
tion of the means to the end. A wrong choice, accord- 
ingly, may be evidence of stupidity or of ignorance, 
but not of a moral defect. Such situations, it is true, 
may easily take on a moral quality. The profits of 
an investment may involve lying advertising or the ex- 
ploitation of helpless employees; the proposed build- 
ing may be a fire trap or may commit a trusting em- 
ployer to an unwarranted expenditure of money. When 
such considerations enter in, there is a conflict of ends. 
Do we really desire the proposed end, to be that kind of 
person? Moral conduct, accordingly, has been defined 
as ''activity called forth and directed by ideas of value 
or worth, where the values concerned are so mutually 
incompatible as to require consideration and selection 
before an overt action is entered upon." ^ 

It is sometimes said that all sin or immorality is 
selfishness. This statement is essentially correct, but 
it obviously requires interpretation so as to bring it 
into line with the foregoing doctrine. There is no sin- 
gle unchanging self to be loved, but only a variety of 
changing selves. In the light of this fact, it is not 
altogether obvious what is meant by selfishness or self- 
love. A selfish person loves comfort, possessions, pleas- 

1 Dewey, J. and Tufts, J, H. — Ethics, p. 209. 



74 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

ures, power, fame, and the like, since these constitute 
the sort of thing that makes up selfhood.- But these 
are loved by the unselfish person too. They consti- 
tute the sort of interest that the normal person cher- 
ishes and seeks to maintain. The difference between 
the selfish and the unselfish person is not to be looked 
for primarily in a difference between the interests which 
they recognize and in some sense cherish, but, rather 
in the way that these interests are maintained. Or, 
more specifically, the difference lies in the way that 
adjustments are made when conflicts arise. As cir- 
cumstances change, our more habitual reactions must 
likewise be changed so as to meet the new conditions. 
Ordinarily, for example, the average citizen avoids 
danger, which shows a commendable interest in his 
own welfare and that of his family. Under certain 
circumstances, however, as in war time or when others 
are in peril, the avoidance of danger may become the 
reverse of laudable. The avoidance of danger may 
then become selfish and cowardly, not because per- 
sonal welfare has no value, but because it is consid- 
ered and acted upon to the exclusion of other values. 
The individual refuses to adjust his habitual behavior 
or concern to the requirements of the new situation, 
and it is precisely this refusal which constitutes selfish- 
ness. He, too, normally desires the safety of his coun- 
try or community; but this desire is not strong enough 
to affect his conduct. Similarly, the desire for com- 
fort or for food is in itself altogether natural and un- 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF IDEALS 75 

objectionable; but if other interests are refused proper 
consideration, the indulgence of these desires becomes 
selfishness. The essence of selfishness, in short, is the 
failure to get out of the rut of previous adaptation, the 
refusal to give a hearing to all the interests that are 
entitled to consideration. The fond parent who spares 
the rod, or the philanthropist who refuses to consider 
the evil effects of indiscriminate charity, is as much 
guilty of selfish indulgence as the man who is too lazy 
to provide properly for his family. Considered in the 
abstract, no impulse or desire is either selfish or un- 
selfish; it becomes so only in relation to other desires 
or values. In other words, selfhood begins when moral 
choices become necessary. The self is not a thing 
apart, but is progressively realized as life opens up 
new vistas and creates larger aims. The self is always 
in process of becoming, and its range and quality alike 
are to be tested by the ends or values which are cultivated 
so as to be made operative for the guidance of conduct. 
So far as education is concerned, it is clear that the 
cultivation of ideals is an inevitable concomitant of 
proper instruction. The development of appreciations 
is at the same time a development of ideals. In Hber- 
ating capacity, education simultaneously provides the 
incentive for seeing visions and dreaming dreams. To 
understand the meaning of things is to have some in- 
sight into the use that may be made of them as the 
instrumentalities for the realization of human pur- 
poses. Unless instruction in any subject touches the 



76 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

sources of appreciation and captures the imagination, 
its value is doubtful; if it succeeds in doing this, the 
effect upon the formation of ideals is direct and inevi- 
table. But if this is to be done effectively, there must 
be some realization, on the part of the teacher, that 
the purpose of teaching is not simply to impart a body 
of organized knowledge, or to prepare for a specific 
occupation, but to give an insight into what the sub- 
ject matter has meant in racial experience, so that it 
may make its appeal to the imagination and become 
the source of ideals that pulsate with the quickened 
life of the individual. 

Ideals, then, spring up spontaneously and inevi- 
tably with the appreciation of meanings. An appre- 
ciation of language sets up a new standard for every- 
day conversation; an appreciation of history gives a 
new conception of citizenship; an appreciation of any 
subject has its influence in determining our notions 
as to what things are worth while. But this is not to 
say that ideals may safely be left to take care of them- 
selves. It may easily happen that appreciations are 
fostered without provision for their modification or 
guidance. History, for example, may be studied in an 
intensely partisan spirit; i.e., from the standpoint of 
a particular religious sect, or of a social class, or of a 
bigoted nationalism. Similarly, literature and mathe- 
matics may cultivate appreciations that have only an 
incidental relation to the rest of life, and indulgence 
in them may become akin to vice. Or virtues like 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF IDEALS 77 

obedience, truthfulness, and loyalty may be fostered 
in isolation, so as to encourage blind subservience. 

If we are really concerned to secure a maximum of 
growth, it is necessary to foster the attitude of acting 
with reference to all the interests that are involved in 
the given situation. To decide in advance that certain 
things are inherently good or bad is to discourage think- 
ing and to hamper development. If we hold that all 
impulses are intrinsically good, we prepare for the type 
of education which glorifies every passing whim and 
makes it a law unto itself. Or if we go to the other 
extreme and seek for moral good in the suppression of im- 
pulse, we become J Puritanic in an evil sense, and de- 
velopment becomes warped. The only safe position 
is the view that impulse has no inherent moral quality 
and that sound moral education consists in developing 
the attitude or disposition to act with reference to all 
the aspects of the situation, and neither from momen- 
tary caprice nor from loyalty to an abstract standard. 

Every society tends to be ultra-conservative in some 
respect or other, in the sense that it encoiu"ages the 
passive acceptance of certain standards and discour- 
ages inquiry. In the past, physical science, when car- 
ried beyond a certain point, was regarded with dis- 
favor, but here the battle has been won. In the field 
of economics, or politics, or religion, this can hardly 
be said to be the case. Tennyson's dictum 

There lives more faith in honest doubt, 

BeHeve me, than in half the creeds. ' 



78 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

can scarcely be taken as the measure of our actual at- 
titude. Lack of conformity in religion we tend to 
condemn out of hand as materialism or atheism; in 
politics as socialism or treason; in economics as an- 
archy or bolshevism. An attitude of this kind may 
be intensified by education, so as to strengthen the 
tendency to meet the world with ready-made ideals and 
fixed standards. In so far as this takes place, educa- 
tion becomes an agency for perpetuating the established 
order without change, and becomes an enemy of prog- 
ress and reform. Education in this case does indeed 
initiate the individual into the life of his community, 
but it does so only to a limited extent, since it raises 
obstacles to the appreciation of the full meaning of 
experience. 

The import of the foregoing is not that it is wrong 
for the teacher to take sides on any subject that is 
matter of controversy. If he is reasonably intelligent 
with reference to the matter in hand, he is bound to 
have opinions of his own. This is both inevitable and 
proper. What is meant is that he must be true to the 
meaning or spirit of education, which requires us to 
treat every stage as a stepping-stone to further devel- 
opment, further growth. It is not for the teacher to 
determine in advance what the final result is to be. 
What is required by the ideal of impartiality is not 
to have no opinion of one's own, but to give a fair 
hearing to all the interests concerned in a given situa- 
tion, to gain an insight into the meaning of whatever 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF IDEALS 79 

is at issue, through sympathetic understanding. It is 
the spirit that maketh ahve. If education means the 
cultivation of appreciations, and the widening of experi- 
ence through learning the meaning of our physical 
and social environment, the attitude that is main- 
tained becomes all-important. If the attitude is in 
accord with the social criterion, education will not only 
conserve the past, but will provide for the enrichment 
of our heritage through further development and modi- 
fication. "•This criterion likewise provides a standard 
for moral judgments. Any judgment that has honestly 
tried to be fair to all the interests concerned is morally 
good, however much it may err in its facts or its con- 
clusions. It is morally good because it has avoided 
the sin of selfishness, which consists in the unwilling- 
ness to readjust so as to preserve or protect as much 
as possible all the interests involved. The standard, 
then, gives direction to the development of ideals, and 
in so doing it makes education serviceable to the in- 
terests of democracy. 

The proper test of ideals, then, is whether they are 
conceived and maintained in a social spirit. Virtues 
like truthfulness, obedience, and loyalty, which spring 
from a sense of cooperation, of personal responsibility 
for a common enterprise or a common good, are very 
different from virtues that mean merely a passive, un- 
questioning conformity to a rule. The virtues, there- 
fore, are cultivated in the right way if the activities 
of the school become a joint undertaking, to which 



80 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

each member makes some contribution and for which 
he assumes some personal responsibihty. The humane 
spirit of sound education is imparted most readily by 
a sort of contagion. Pupils are quick to sense the 
attitude of the teacher, and the impression thus made 
is reflected in the quality of the work that is done; 
and it is precisely this generous, human attitude, this 
spirit of fairness and of interest in all human values, 
that must be fostered in order to insure the continued 
and healthy development of ideals. 

''We often hear it said that the hope of the future 
lies in education. It is not very long since many 
people built high hopes upon the magic of ^evolution.' 
Our faith in evolution has been sobered by events; 
we now realize, more or less clearly, that salvation will 
not come automatically to a long-suffering humanity. 
But this is as true of education as it is of evolution. 
Education is a tool that can be made to serve many 
masters, and the notion that it will inevitably and 
mechanically create the spirit upon which the future 
depends is a dangerous delusion. Instead of recogniz- 
ing the fact that the development of aims calls for 
educational guidance, we treat the aims as fixed and 
the subject matter as though it inherently or auto- 
matically realized the aim, without realizing that this 
practice is just the modern equivalent of the old-time 
doctrine of faculty psychology. The chief difference 
between now and then is that the magic powers which 
were formerly supposed to reside in the soul have been 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF IDEALS 81 

transferred to the subject matter. Naturally the ex- 
pected results do not materialize, but instead of reme- 
dying the difficulty by a different organization of sub- 
ject matter and different methods of presentation, we 
tinker up the old machinery by providing new courses 
to cover the deficiencies. Should the High School 
teach thrift? Should it teach the nobility of com- 
mon labor? Should it teach respect for law and for 
the enforcement of law? Should it teach respect for 
parents? Should it teach patriotism and the rights of 
other peoples? In former years the shortcomings of 
purely disciplinary or cultural training were met by 
the introduction of courses aimed at immediately prac- 
tical or narrowly utihtarian results. We seem to have 
learned little from that experience. Whenever the de- 
sired educational results are not forthcoming, an agi- 
tation springs up for a new course to furnish what is 
needed. 'In the multitude of educations, education is 
forgotten.''' 1 

It has been said that the function of education is 
both to transmit the achievements of the past and to 
provide for progress and reform. We are sometimes 
under the delusion that growth in production and in 
complexity is identical with progress. Civilization 
then becomes synonymous with machinery. But it 
should be obvious that machines are but tools, and 

1 The foregoing paragraph is quoted from an article by the writer, 
entitled "Educational Aims and Scientific Method" in School and 
Society, Vol. XI, p. 42. 



82 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

that the worth of a civilization depends rather on the 
use that we make of these tools. In so far as they 
secure greater opportunity and make the fruits of the 
past more accessible to every one, machinery becomes 
indeed a symbol of civilization. To a considerable ex- 
tent our inventions and labor-saving devices have un- 
doubtedly led to such results. The laborer of to-day 
has many advantages that were withheld from the lord 
of former centuries. But the changes have brought 
new problems and new dangers. Commercial rivalries 
and class struggles contain a threat of disaster, unless 
we cultivate the spirit through which conflicts may be 
adjusted amicably as they arise. Overemphasis of 
production or efficiency is not the same as conserving 
the past; that way madness lies. Nor, on the other 
hand, is it the function of education to provide for 
the future by attempting to determine beforehand what 
the organization of future society shall be. Whether 
the next generation is to perpetuate the present politi- 
cal, economic, or social order is not for us to decide. 
Education is not propaganda of this kind. But the 
spirit in which the questions of the future will be ad- 
judicated is determined by what we do now. In large 
measure we can decide whether or not the ideals of the 
next generation will have a genuinely social quality; 
whether business, poUtics, craftsmanship, are to be 
regarded primarily as means to personal advancement 
or as different forms of a common life. To achieve 
this transformation in the ideals of the business man, 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF IDEALS 83 

the politician, the craftsman, is the legitimate and 
necessary function of education. If every member of 
the community can be made to feel his responsibility 
for the common welfare, adjustments will be made 
intelligently and our ideals will prove themselves equal 
to the emergencies that the future will bring forth. 

REFERENCES 

Bagley, W. C. — Educational Values, chs. 1-5. 
Dewey, J. — Democracy and Education, ch. 26. 

— Moral Principles in Education. 
Dewey, J. and Tufts, J. H. — Ethics, chs. 10 and 18. 
James, W. — Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, ch. 10. 
Mecklin, J. M. — Introduction to Social Ethics, ch. 16. 
Otto, M. C. — "The Two Ideals"; The Unpopular Review, Vol 

XI, p. 386; Vol. XII, p. 138. 
Paulsen, F. — System of Ethics, Book II, chs. 1, 5. 



CHAPTER V 
INTEREST, DUTY, AND EFFORT 

In educational literature the terms "interest ^' and 
*'duty'^ occupy a prominent place. They have been 
used as slogans, as battle cries. The more extreme forms 
of educational theory have held, on the one hand, that 
all educational activity should be motivated by inter- 
est, that the child should be required to do nothing 
which he did not feel inclined to do ; on the other hand, 
that training in abstract duty, or duty for duty's sake, 
is one of the chief ends of education. The first posi- 
tion takes its appeal by preference to biology and 
psychology, the second to the moral law. If we judge 
the two positions by the contentions of their oppo- 
nents, the first makes the child a creature of whim 
and caprice, while the second makes it a blind tool 
or machine, of which the training furnished by the 
German educational system has of late years been 
pointed out as a horrible example. 

As thus stated, the two positions appear to be hope- 
lessly divergent and irreconcilable. Motivation by 
interest seems to subordinate the individual to the 
situation. As long as the situation happens to woo 
us, to attract and charm, we are able to act, but if it 
happens not to do so, our motive power is gone and 

84 



INTEREST, DUTY, AND EFFORT 85 

we are helpless. Shall we accept this dependence on 
the environment as the law of life or as evidence of 
weak-mindedness? According to James, this depen- 
dence, which ^^ makes the child seem to belong less to 
himself than to every object which happens to catch 
his notice, is the first thing which the teacher must 
overcome. It is never overcome in some people, 
whose work, to the end of life, gets done in the inter- 
stices of their mind-wandering.'' ^ It is the duty of 
education to subordinate the situation to the indi- 
vidual, to enable him to act with reference to remote 
ends, whether the task in hand has any interest or 
not. Not only that, but it may be argued that this 
independence of activity can be secured only by dis- 
regarding interest, at least at certain points; i.e., by 
cultivating the attitude of duty for the sake of duty. 
This alternative, however, raises grave misgivings. 
In the first place, it seems to rest on a questionable 
psychology. How can ^^duty" rule over interest? 
The things that interest us are things to which the im- 
pulses of our being respond, and how are these impulses 
to be controlled or suppressed, except by some opposing 
impulse? Shall we say, then, that duty is just another 
of our interests? To take this ground is virtually a 
surrender to the enemy. Abstract duty is just a word; 
it must have some specific content for the guidance of 
conduct before it can evoke interest. Duty must be 
made to mean welfare of humanity, perfection, pleasure, 

* James, W. — Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, p. 417. 



86 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

culture, or something of the sort; there is no magic in 
a mere word. But if we substitute some such content 
for the word ^^duty," it is not clear at once what has 
been gained. Men are undoubtedly interested in such 
things as those just mentioned, as they are interested 
in many other things, but the whole issue has now 
become an affair of interests, which is precisely what 
is maintained by the doctrine of interest. What is 
needed is to make some kind of interest authoritative 
for the guidance of conduct. If the doctrine of in- 
terest means control by whim, it stands condemned. 

If we are to gain further light on the subject, it is 
necessary to go more into detail in the matter of in- 
terest, particularly in its relation to effort. Interest is 
a process that is characterized by concentration or 
absorption. The process may be of short duration or 
it may cover a considerable period of time. During 
the early years of life all our activities or 'interests" 
are of a transitory nature; objects hold our attention 
only momentarily, and out of sight is out of mind. 
With the growth of experience comes a greater range 
of inclusiveness of purpose, but the essential character 
of the activity remains unchanged. Whether the pur- 
pose be narrow or wide in its scope, the given purpose 
embodies the whole self of the moment; the self is 
completely identified with the activity that is going 
on, and the activity is interesting because it furnishes 
an opportunity for the expression or development of 
the impulses and tendencies of the individual. The 



INTEREST, DUTY, AND EFFORT 87 

child becomes absorbed in his building blocks because 
of the opportunity they offer to use his hands and to 
exercise his mechanical bent; the adult is interested 
in building a house, acquiring a fortune, achieving a 
social reform, or molding the policy of an empire, 
because this course of action embodies the purpose 
with which his selfhood has become identified. 

In the attempt to give expression to the native ten- 
dencies which prompt activity, we soon become in- 
volved in effort. Many a course of action, like the 
course of true love, fails to run smoothly. Obstacles 
present themselves, which can be removed only at the 
expense of persistency, and perhaps ingenuity. The 
building blocks may fall down a number of times be- 
fore the structure is completed, and the house that we 
build or the book that we write is likely to call for 
much labor and watchful care, before the end is at- 
tained. In order to accomplish the result we are 
obliged to face difficulties and contend with them, and 
the expenditure of energy thus required is called effort. 

This, however, is but one phase of the matter. As 
long as we give ourselves whole-heartedly to the over- 
coming of obstacles, our problem is just a problem of 
ways and means to the end that we have in view. 
The end or purpose is, for the time being, in complete 
possession of the field and furnishes the driving power 
that keeps us to our task. All the habits, tendencies, 
impulses, of the moment are directed to one end, which 
claims our undivided interest and attention; and our 



88 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

whole concern is with the means for the realization of 
this end. But there is also another kind of effort. 
From the standpoint of educational theory and prac- 
tice, the situation is fundamentally different when 
effort is required, not primarily to remove obstacles, 
but to secure unified and efficient activity. The trouble 
is perhaps not so much ''without'^ as ^^ within,'^ not so 
much with the difficulty of the task as with our dis- 
taste for it. The end that we set ourselves is desired 
for some reason or other, but this desire comes into 
conflict with some other desire or tendency. It is in 
situations of this sort that the sense of duty has its 
origin. To all appearances a new and mysterious force 
now enters upon the scene. Unity of action is secured 
by the exercise of a military dictatorship, which holds 
in subjection the disaffected elements in the commu- 
nity. Activity in the direction of the end is sustained 
only by a certain compulsion; and effort is exerted, 
not simply in order to overcome the obstacles to our 
purpose, but to maintain the supremacy of our purpose 
over the desires or tendencies that are opposed to it. 

That many acts must be accomplished in some such 
fashion as just indicated is a sadly familiar fact. It is 
also true, indeed, that situations of this kind frequently 
remedy themselves. The task which at the outset is 
just a necessary evil may in the end become supremely 
interesting. Timely reinforcements may arrive. The 
lawyer or the physician may grow weary and lose his im- 
mediate interest in the case which baffles him, but the 



INTEREST, DUTY, AND EFFORT 89 

tendency to neglect it for the sake of something else is 
inhibited by habit, by considerations of sympathy, or 
of the effect of failure on his reputation and practice. 
When such considerations operate, the end in 
view; viz., success with the case, becomes an entirely 
different affair, ffhe considerations are so many ap- 
, peals to various tendencies or desires, all of which find 
their opportunity of realization in this particular case. 
As a result the case gains a new hold on the attention; 
the flagging interest is aroused, for the end to be at- 
tained has undergone a transformation. It is now an 
end which arouses and unifies a number of diverse 
tendencies and thus supplies the conditions for con- 
centration and interest. 

Cases of this sort furnish us a clue to the meaning 
of duty. At the outset there is a conflict of impulses, 
so that action is inhibited. There is a lack of organi- 
zation, which must be remedied before action can take 
place. The remedy is sought by widening the area of 
considerations, by bringing to mind various facts or 
circumstances that have bearing on the matter in hand. 
In other words, we seek to construct a new environ- 
ment, to which we can react in harmonious and effec- 
tive fashion. The professional or business man who 
seeks to renew his strength by bringing to mind what 
success or failure may mean to him is constructing a 
new situation for himself, which will call forth a more 
appropriate form of response. He may do this by 
dramatizing to himself the results of success or failure, 



90 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

SO as to realize more intimately the meaning of the 
situation in which he finds himself. By doing this he 
gets the ''feel" of it all, which is then transformed 
into overt conduct. If this is done vividly, with real 
imaginative power, the task in hand appears in a new 
perspective. It is something to be done, not because 
duty requires it, but because he wants to do it, because 
the outcome means so much to him. On the other 
hand, this reference to the background of considera- 
tions or interests may be made without much imagina- 
tiveness or dramatic detail. This reference may serve 
the purpose of keeping him going, but in a very dif- 
ferent way. He knows the meaning of his acts, after 
a fashion, but the ''realizing sense" is not present; he 
is obliged to rely instead upon habit and a sense of 
duty, and the sustained action which is demanded is 
achieved by reliance upon the dull heave of effort. 

What is significant here is the fact that it is possible 
to get the work done without this "realizing sense." 
The sense of duty is just the recognition of these 
more remote interests, without their vivid presence in 
the imagination. Duty thus becomes a substitute for 
the immediate appreciation of these more remote in- 
terests. If this immediate appreciation were present, 
it would bring into play the energies of our being, and 
the sense of duty would be swallowed up by interest. 
But the fact that there is no immediate appreciation 
need not mean that these interests are completely ig- 
nored. To count them in, to act with reference to 



INTEREST, DUTY, AND EFFORT 91 

them, under such circumstances, is precisely what 
makes the difference between intelligent behavior and 
impulse. The family selling the cookstove for tickets 
to the circus, with no thought of the morrow; the 
savage gorging himself at the risk of future starva- 
tion; the spendthrift wasting his substance in riotous 
living, with no provision for a rainy day, are all in- 
stances of the disregard of more remote interests or 
considerations. Children and primitive peoples tend 
to be immersed in the present; whatever lies beyond 
the immediate horizon does not figure in the control 
of conduct. With mental development there comes 
an increasing regard for what is not directly present, 
and this recognition is what we call the sense of duty. 
The sense of duty, then, means the pressure of our 
more remote interests upon the desires and impulses 
of the moment. The fact that a sense of duty is pres- 
ent at all indicates a lack of harmony or coordination. 
If overt action is to take place, some sort of adjust- 
ment must be achieved. Sometimes this adjustment 
comes about with a minimum of intelligent direction. 
The considerations that are suggested simply tap new 
reservoirs of energy and the inhibitions are swept 
away. How potent this inrush of new energy may be 
in the destruction of inhibitions which ordinarily would 
interfere with, and possibly prevent, action appears 
most impressively when the flood gates are opened 
wide and a strong tide of impulse rushes in. When 
this happens, * things ordinarily impossible grow nat- 



92 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

ural because the inhibitions are annulled. Their 'no! 
no!' is not only not heard, it does not exist. Obstacles 
are then like tissue-paper hoops to the circus-rider — 
no impediment; the flood is higher than the dam they 
make. ^ Lass sie betteln gehn wenn sie hungrig sindr 
cries the grenadier, frantic over his Emperor's capture, 
when his wife and babes are suggested; and men pent 
into a burning theatre have been known to cut their 
way through the crowd with knives." ^ 

It was said a moment ago that action of this sort 
involves a minimum of intelligence. Opposing consid- 
erations are simply thrust aside, without being accorded 
a hearing. The resultant action may be commendable, 
but if so, this is just a happy accident. It is an- 
other case of selling the cookstove in order to go to 
the circus. If conduct is to be intelligent, there must 
be sufficient reflection to make sure that opposing con- 
siderations deserve to be overruled. If the choice is 
both important and beclouded, it becomes necessary 
to canvass the whole situation carefully. The moral 
quality of a man then shows itself in the care that he 
exercises to give proper weight to all the interests that 
are involved. It is easy and tempting to slur over 
considerations that do not happen to attract us at the 
time, or to substitute for the labor of thinking some 
dictum, such as ''Business is business,"or ''Charity begins 
at home." If all interests have been considered, to the 
best of our ability, then that adjustment accords with 

* James, W. — Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 263. 



INTEREST, DUTY, AND EFFORT 93 

duty, because it seeks to conserve a maximum of these 
interests. In many situations, of course, reflection is 
unnecessary. We perceive at once which course of 
conduct is required, and when this is the case, an 
appeal to duty may properly serve as a substitute for 
a painstaking survey of the situation. 

On the basis of the foregoing discussion we may now 
venture to attempt a reconciliation of the conflicting 
claims of interest and duty. Each of these two posi- 
tions represents an important truth. In the last resort, 
conduct is just the expression of our native or acquired 
tendencies, capacities, or preferences, and in this sense 
all conduct is based on interest. Duty in the abstract 
is an empty word; it is the grin without the cat. But 
duty when properly interpreted is a thing of tremen- 
dous significance. Taken in this way, it is simply the 
demand that conduct must be intelligent or rational. 
The failure to consider the whole meaning of a situa- 
tion, in so far as that meaning is accessible to us, is 
fundamentally unintelligent. Moreover, it is possible 
for persons invested with authority to encourage the 
trait or habit of reflection in matters pertaining to 
conduct. This may be done in various ways, such as 
persuasion, explanation, or coercion. There are cases 
in which coercion or punishment is by far the most 
effective. A man may be incorrigibly devoted to fish- 
ing and loafing, to the neglect of his proper duties, 
until he is haled into court for nonsupport of his 
family. Until that point is reached, remonstrance and 



94 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

persuasion may have been wholly futile. But when 
he finds himself in the toils of the law, things begin 
to look different. When society expresses its disap- 
proval through the stern hand of authority, he acquires 
a realizing sense of how his conduct looks to others and 
what it really means. When punishment has this ef- 
fect, it becomes a great educational agency, in the 
schoolroom and outside. If properly applied, punish- 
ment has the same educative effect as what we some- 
times call ^'the natural consequences of our acts.'' In 
one way or another every person requires education of 
this sort, since we do not spontaneously and naturally 
count in all relevant considerations before we act. In 
so far as we do not act with reference to remote 
considerations, we are the victims of caprice and 
circumstance. Independence of the passing whim is 
indispensable in the education of every person; which 
is the same as saying that every person needs to be 
trained in a sense of duty. This training is an essen- 
tial condition for that stability of character which 
is necessary if a man is to be a real man and take a 
man's part in the affairs of life. 

It should be noted that this standpoint differs mate- 
rially from the doctrine of duty for its own sake. As 
was said before, duty is just a name for the claim of 
the more remote interests. Duty, then, finds its ful- 
filment in the adjustment of these various interests or 
values, and this adjustment is an act of inteUigence 
and a sign of growth. The sense of duty collides with 



INTEREST, DUTY, AND EFFORT 95 

distractions and with the promptings of laziness and 
indulgence. When a person once ^^gets into" his 
work, the inhibitions drop away and he gives himself 
whole-heartedly to the task before him, at least for a 
time. With most men a more or less deliberate hold- 
ing of themselves to the work before them seems to 
be the rule. A great share of the world's work is 
undoubtedly done with low pressure, the concentra- 
tion of attention, such as it is, being secured primarily, 
not by the spontaneous cooperation of impulses to a 
common end, but by a certain expenditure of effort to 
fight off distractions. 

It has been pointed out that by effort is meant the 
expenditure of energy both in removing obstacles and 
in maintaining a dominant purpose throughout a 
course of action. Effort in the former sense is obvi- 
ously quite compatible with the highest degree of con- 
centration or absorption; a high degree of concentra- 
tion is, indeed, very favorable to the exercise of effort 
in this sense. With regard to effort in the second sense, 
however, the case is quite otherwise. This kind of ef- 
fort is demanded precisely because the concentration 
or interest is not sufficient to give a maximum of effi- 
ciency. The effort bears witness to the presence of 
inhibitory tendencies, which interfere with the '^mo- 
mentima" or ^^mpacf of our action. These inhibi- 
tions act like brakes on a wheel, so that the machinery 
runs at low speed when a high speed would be other- 
wise attainable. The effort which is required to main- 



96 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

tain a given purpose in a position of authority, as 
against conflicting tendencies, varies inversely with the 
degree of concentration or interest that is attained. 
If, as a result of the effort, we finally become absorbed 
in our work, this effort has served its purpose and dis- 
appears from the scene. Its work is done when it 
has created the most favorable conditions for the appli- 
cation of effort in the other sense; viz., persistent and 
whole-hearted endeavor in the elimination of obstacles. 
The interest which is ultimately aroused is due to the 
fact that, from a psychological standpoint, the end or 
aim has undergone a change or process of develop- 
ment. We begin to see more clearly the possibilities 
that are contained in our undertaking; and if the 
undertaking calls for thinking, interest is aroused be- 
cause ideas begin to sprout and bud; the subject grows 
under our hands, and we are carried along by the 
momentum of the activities that are excited and 
brought into play as new vistas come into view. When 
this stage is reached, the joy of working begins and 
efficiency is at its maximum. To reach this state is 
the proper goal or ideal of all work that is not the 
barest routine; but all too often the inevitable pre- 
condition is the dead heave of effort by which the 
inhibitions are overcome, and concentration, interest, 
is put in possession of the field. 

This initial effort seems to consist essentially in a 
deliberate shutting out of all tendencies that are in- 
compatible with the task in hand. We virtuously put 



INTEREST, DUTY, AND EFFORT 97 

all conflicting suggestions behind us as so many temp- 
tations, in order to give the favored activity room to 
blossom and expand. In its immediate intention the 
effort is simply a means to an end. If the effort fails, 
if the subject does not open out and lead on to new 
achievements, we soon develop a distaste for it, and 
subsequent efforts in the same direction become in- 
creasingly difficult. Effort of this kind has nothing to 
recommend it, unless it leads to results; and the failure 
to achieve results is pretty sure to do damage, in that 
it sets up a reaction against the particular task upon 
which the effort was fruitlessly expended. The teacher 
is entitled to require that certain work be done, since 
there is an antecedent presumption that he is the best 
judge as to what should be done. But this authority 
imposes upon him the obligation to ^^make good" by 
presenting the subject matter so that it will become 
vital to the learner. 

When materials of study are chosen without refer- 
ence to the native tendencies or activities of the child, 
we have a fairly complete misunderstanding of the 
purpose of education. If the subject matter is to serve 
this purpose, it must be such as to further or develop 
the capacities and tendencies of the pupil, which means 
that he must be able to ''see into" things so as to 
appreciate their bearings and significance in various 
directions. When this happens, other tendencies or 
impulses are aroused, which reinforce what is already 
going on. If the subject matter develops properly, 



98 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

the rest may safely be left to take care of itself. An 
imaginative but striking illustration of how a trivial 
fact may become invested with interest and meaning 
is furnished in the following quotation: 

" In the ' Sign of the Four ' Watson remarks to Holmes, 
^I have heard you say that it is difficult for a man 
to have any object in daily use without leaving the 
impress of his individuality upon it in such a way that 
a trained observer might read it. Now, I have here 
a watch that has recently come into my possession. 
Would you have the kindness to let me have an opinion 
of the character of the late owner?' 

^^ After examining the watch, Holmes concludes that 
it belonged to Watson's elder brother, who was a man 
of untidy habits, and who, although left with good 
prospects, 4ived for some time in poverty, with occa- 
sional short intervals of prosperity, and finally, taking 
to drink, he died.' 

'^ These facts. Holmes explains to the astonished 
Watson, he discovers from observing seemingly trivial 
markings on the watch. The initials, H. W., on the 
back of the watch, give a clue to the owner. The fact 
that the watchcase is cut and marked all over from 
the circumstance that other hard objects were kept in 
the watch pocket with the timepiece, shows the 
owner's carelessness. The value of the watch suggests 
that the owner must have had at one time other ar- 
ticles of value. Pin point scratches, giving the num- 
bers of pawn tickets, reveal the fact that the owner 



INTEREST, DUTY, AND EFFORT 99 

was often in financial difficulties; while the fact that 
he redeemed his pledges, since the watch was pawned 
at least four times, shows that he had occasional bursts 
of prosperity. Finally the thousands of scratches 
around the keyhole — marks made by the key slipping 
— -indicate that the watch belonged to a drunkard, 
who, on winding it at night, left the trace of his un- 
steady hand." ^ 

Wlien a subject proves so fertile in suggestions, its 
power in holding the attention and stimulating think- 
ing is assured. It has become transformed from an 
insignificant or ^'bare'* fact into a fact that is inti- 
mately related to a multitude of things to which we 
respond easily and naturally, and we are thus fur- 
nished with an object or a direction for these re- 
sponses. This is only another way of saying that our 
background of knowledge or ^^apperceptive mass" has 
been brought to bear upon the object so as to make 
it luminous with meaning. When this occurs, the most 
commonplace objects may take on an absorbing in- 
terest, as when, to the eye of the geologist, chance 
scratches on the face of a cliff become transformed 
into a fascinating tale of glaciers and erosions in 
bygone ages. To work transformations of this kind 
is the proper aim of education, on the intellectual 
side. To acquire a liberal education is, very hterally, 
to build for one's self a new heaven and a new 
earth. 

* Colvin, S. S. — The Learning Process, pp. 315, 316, note. 



100 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

Unless new facts are so related to the background 
of former experience that both the fact and the back- 
ground become enriched thereby, learning becomes 
formal and detached. There is perhaps a certain glib- 
ness or readiness in reproducing what has been pas- 
sively absorbed, but this is vastly different from real 
insight. Ideas, like words, may be fixed by a process 
of memorizing, in the sense that they do not become 
assimilated to the experience of the learner. And the 
final result of this failure to reinterpret the world of 
the learner to himself is, naturally enough, to create 
a feeling of boredom and dislike ; or, if interest be never- 
theless maintained, the source of the interest lies in 
things extraneous to the subject, such as love of com- 
mendation, rivalry, fear of failure, etc., which may 
conceal the fact that the process of education has 
failed to attain its proper aim. 

It is true, fortunately, that good teaching is not 
necessarily dependent upon a formulation, on the part 
of the teacher, of the results which education should 
seek to accomplish. Many a teacher is wiser than he 
knows. But without a formulation there is always 
the danger of misplaced emphasis and mistaken aims. 
To some extent, indeed, the bright child may rectify 
the mistakes of the teacher by making just this rein- 
terpretation of his own experience, or — if a different 
statement be preferred — by interpreting the new facts 
in such a way as to relate them intimately to what he 
already knows. But if the teacher is not guided by 



INTEREST, DUTY, AND EFFORT 101 

correct ideals or instincts, such cases are likely to be 
the exception rather than the rule. 

There is a certain parallel to this in ^ draining for 
duty," which may be either formal or intelligent. It is 
undoubtedly necessary to inculcate the virtues which 
are fundamental to our common life. Children are 
disposed to accept the authority of these standards, 
partly, perhaps, because they recognize their social use- 
fulness, but partly also because these standards are 
socially approved. In the main, the child accepts the 
standards in unquestioning conformity. Sooner or 
later, however, situations arise, in the life of the indi- 
vidual and of the community, which call for reflection. 
Does obedience to parents, for example, require the 
adoption of beliefs, or the selection of a career, in 
accordance with their wishes, without regard to the 
individual's own opinions or preferences? To what ex- 
tent does loyalty to community or party or country 
require acquiescence in what is wrong? One way of 
determining such questions is to invoke the rule or 
standard; the other is to canvass the whole situation 
as thoroughly as may be, in order to shape our con- 
duct with reference to what is best on the whole. The 
former course means blind conformity; the latter 
means the application of intelligence and the accept- 
ance of individual responsibility for the decision that 
is made. The adoption of this latter course does not 
mean that the standards of conduct are set aside; it 
means that the decision is not made exclusively on the 



102 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

basis of one set of considerations. There may be, as 
we sometimes say, a higher loyalty, a higher obedience. 
It is just because an effort is made to practice obedi- 
ence or loyalty to all the interests that have a claim 
upon us that there is a struggle and a need of readjust- 
ment. The struggle is evidence of sensitiveness to 
a variety of claims. This is what gives point to the 
declaration of the lover who was about to leave for 
service in war, 

I could not love thee, dear, so much, 
Loved I not honor more. 

Unfortunately, it seems to be quite possible to dis- 
courage inquiry and reflection of this kind, and to 
foster instead the disposition to be ruled by passive 
conformity. When this takes place, the tendency is 
in the direction of unthinking conservatism. For 
education the real issue is not whether training in duty 
is to be provided, but whether the appKcation of intel- 
ligence to affairs of conduct is to be encouraged or 
discouraged. 

If conduct is to be intelligent, it is necessary to act 
with reference to what was previously called the '^back- 
ground of interests." Sometimes the mere recognition 
of these interests is sufficient for the purpose of making 
a right choice. At other times an imaginative con- 
struction of the situation may be necessary, in order 
to ensure intelligent judgment. The stimulation of the 
imagination may be much faciUtated through oratory, 



INTEREST, DUTY, AND EFFORT 103 

the drama, and other agencies, which perform an in- 
dispensable function in this connection. But it is 
clear that the readiness to enter imaginatively into 
situations as they arise is an attitude to be cultivated 
and not left to chance. Training in duty, then, should 
mean training to establish a liking or preference for 
considering imaginatively and sympathetically all the 
interests that may be affected by our conduct. With- 
out this attitude of mind there can be no adequate 
assurance of the essential rightness of conduct. 

The conclusion, then, to which the facts seem to 
point is that the conflict between interest and duty 
may be adjusted by a reinterpretation of both interest 
and duty. If we make interest inclusive of all matters 
for which we should have a care if we were to give 
them a fair hearing; i.e., if we take duty to mean the 
claim of the more ^'remote'' considerations, the conflict 
disappears. There remains, then, no basis for the 
view that a child should be required to do nothing of 
which it has no ^^felt need"; which means that it 
should never be required to do anything at all. By 
the same reasoning a man should not be expected to 
repair a leaky roof as long as the weather is fair, if 
he does not happen to feel the need of a better roof 
until it begins to rain. What is necessary is that there 
should be a rational motive or reason for the pupil, 
apart from the fear of punishment. On the other hand, 
the insistence on duty does not mean that effort on 
its own account, apart from achievement, is a thing 



104 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

to be prized. Life is too full of real problems and 
real values to put any premium on effort for its own 
sake. Duty for its own sake means blind subservience, 
which has been responsible for many a chapter in the 
weary history of misery and woe. Duty is just the 
obligation to be intelligent, to cultivate that respon- 
siveness to values which is necessary for the conser- 
vation of past achievements and for further progress. 

REFERENCES 

Bagley, W. C. — "Duty and Discipline in Education"; Teachers 

College Record, Vol. XIX, p. 419. 
Charters, W. W. — ■ Methods of Teaching, chs. 9, 10, 11. 
CoLViN, S. S. — The Learning Process, ch. 17. 
CouRSAULT, J. H. — Principles of Education, ch. 6. 
Dewey, J. — Democracy and Education, ch. 10. 

— Interest and Effort in Education. 
Dewey, J. and Tufts, J. H. — Ethics, ch. 17. 
Otto, M. C. — "Kant and the Militarists"; The Unpopular 

Review, Vol. XI, p. 167. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE PROCESS OF THINKING 

The outstanding characteristic of the behavior of 
conscious beings is the fact that past experience is 
utilized by them for the sake of making new adjust- 
ments. As a result of certain happenings, things are 
invested with meanings that they did not have before. 
We learn from experience that clouds mean rain, that 
quinine will cure fever, that eggs and crockery are 
fragile; and we vary our behavior accordingly. The 
change in behavior comes about because the objects 
concerned have undergone a certain transformation. 
They have become signs or symbols of certain conse- 
quences. To say that a thing has acquired meaning 
is to say that it now points to some further thing ; the 
thing that is present has become a sign of something 
that is absent, and in proportion as things can be so 
used they become instrumentalities for our purposes. 

Whenever a thing becomes a sign of something else 
it is said to have a meaning, the meaning being that 
which is pointed to, suggested, or indicated. But 
the term ^ ^meaning" is also used in a wider sense. 
We may say, for example, that the tree before our 
eyes means a solid object, which can be cut dowri with 
an ax. It means this, since we are not touching it at 

105 



106 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

the moment or applying an ax to it. But the experi- 
ence of seeing the tree may not contain the pecuhar 
relationship of representing or pointing at all. The 
tree means solidity, etc., in the sense that it exercises 
a certain control over the behavior of the percipient, 
This explanation applies to all cases where we are dealing 
with familiar objects, and all such experiences are classed 
as cases of recognition. 

The situation is different when an element of doubt or 
hesitation enters in. A noise, for example, may not be 
immediately recognized as the noise of a passing automo- 
bile, but may leave us in doubt. Was it an automobile, 
or was it distant thunder? The noise suggests, or points 
to, both automobile and thunder ; but the pointing is un- 
certain, doubtful. The fact to be noted in the present 
connection is that under such circumstances the thing 
meant or pointed to does not blend with the sign, but 
is marked off and placed in a specific relation to the 
noise. The experience occurs in the form '' noise- 
meaning-thunder,' ^ which, as an experience, is very dif- 
ferent from simple recognition. The difference turns 
on the fact that in the more complex experience one thing 
is explicitly used as a sign of another thing. Whenever 
this occurs we have, not recognition, but inference, 
since inference consists in using one thing as a sign 
of another thing. And inference, as will presently 
appear, is the basic feature of thinking. 

In order to make an explicit inference, then, it is 
necessary to mark off the thing meant, to recognize it 



THE PROCESS OF THINKING 107 

as a meaning. When this is not done, the object has 
meaning only in the sense that it controls conduct 
so as to make our acts appropriate to the situation; 
our conduct is then said to be based upon recogni- 
tion and not upon inference. A meaning that is marked 
off is called a concept. Concepts are substitutes for 
things that are not present. They are very different 
from the things themselves, yet they enable us to act 
as though the object itself were present. The meaning 
"rain," for example, will not spoil our clothes or drench 
the ground as a real rain will do, yet the suggested 
rain may prompt us to take an umbrella or to seek 
shelter, as though it were actually raining. As was 
said a moment ago, meanings may be marked off from 
the things by which they are brought to mind; we may 
even get rid of these things altogether by substitut- 
ing words as signs, and reflect on the usefulness or 
the disagreeableness of rain when there are no clouds 
in the sky to suggest rain. Such meanings are con- 
cepts, and they constitute the intellectual stock in 
trade by means of which we normally bring to bear 
our past experiences upon new situations. The things 
that function as the signs of meanings are called data 
in scientific parlance; they are the evidence by which 
our inference is supported. 

We sometimes speak of inference as a result and 
sometimes as a process. Columbus, for example, on the 
basis of certain facts, made the inference that the earth 
is round. A statement of this kind tells us merely the 



108 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

conclusion at which he arrived; it tells us nothing 
of the process by which the conclusion was reached. 
It tells us what he thought, but does not tell us how he 
thought. When we consider inference or thinking as a 
process, we soon find that there may be great variations 
both in complexity and in procedure. On the side of 
complexity, thinking varies all the way from momentary 
hesitation to investigations that extend over the greater 
part of a lifetime. In the case of the noise I may satisfy 
myself in a few moments, by looking or further listening, 
that it is the sign of an approaching storm. In the 
case of Darwin, the conclusion that evolution had 
come about through the agency of Natural Selection 
represented the fruit of years of arduous labor. When 
the process becomes more complex it grows into what 
Dewey calls the Complete Act of Thought. In spite 
of all variations in complexity and in procedure, think- 
ing presents certain characteristic traits that are rec- 
ognizable everywhere, and a process of thinking is 
called a Complete Act, not on the ground of the cor- 
rectness or logical soundness of the thinking, but on 
the ground of the presence of all these characteristic 
traits. 

A simple illustration will, perhaps, serve as a useful 
introduction to the question of what constitutes a 
complete act of thought. Let us suppose that a per- 
son enters a room and finds a windowpane broken. 
What is the cause of the damage? Perhaps the glass 
was broken by boys while playing ball. This sugges- 



i 



THE PROCESS OF THINKING 109 



tion or hypothesis furnishes a starting point for fur- 
ther inquiry. He notes next that the broken glass is 
mostly inside the room, which indicates that the pane 
was broken from the outside. In the center of the 
broken pane is a circular hole, such as might be made 
by the impact of a ball. These facts are noticed and 
are explained by reference to the hypothesis; viz., 
that the damage was done by a misdirected ball. -To 
explain means to recreate or to reconstruct the situa- 
tion by means of concepts. If the ball hit the window, it 
would be likely to make a circular hole and it would 
force the broken glass inward so as to make it fall on 
the floor of the room. As we sometimes say in ex- 
plaining facts of this kind: ^^That is just what you 
would expect.'' The facts are not relevant facts, they 
do not constitute evidence, unless they lend them- 
selves to explanation in this way. This process has 
been called by Bagley^ ''explanatory deduction/' We 
combine certain meanings, such as the concept of a 
fast-moving baseball, with a- further meaning, that of 
an intervening windowpane, and in some way we get 
as a result a further meaning; viz., that the glass will 
be broken and the glass forced into the room. We do 
not actually reproduce the event, but we do repro- 
duce it after a fashion, by means of substitute objects 
or concepts, and by so doing we ascertain the implica- 
tion of the concepts, which means that we discover 
something further which must be true under the as- 

1 Bagley, W. C.—The Educative Process, p. 308. 



110 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

sumed conditions. The observed facts are significant 
for us, they support the suggestion or hypothesis, just 
in so far as it is possible to interpret them in this way. 

But a second procedure is still open to us. To some 
extent it is possible to go through this process of in- 
terpretation, not after the facts have been discovered, 
but in advance of such discovery. In reproducing the 
situation conceptually, we may conclude, or deduce, 
that under such circumstances not only the glass but 
the ball as well would find its way into the room. In 
Bagley's terminology this is '^anticipatory deduction." 
We do not know from observation that the ball is in 
the room, but according to this process of inference, it 
''ought to be." So we institute a search, and find 
the ball, or at any rate, a ball, under a piece of furni- 
ture on the side of the room opposite the window. 
Then, to make the chain of evidence still stronger, we 
may resort once more to inference. If this is the ball 
that broke the window, it is likely that close inspec- 
tion would reveal particles of glass adhering to its 
surface. If this proves to be the case, we have a 
further bit of evidence in substantiation of the original 
suggestion that the window was broken by boys who 
were playing ball. 

The illustration is simple, yet it is typical of the way 
in which intelhgence proceeds in reaching its conclu- 
sions. To a scientist, for example, the appearance of 
a valley may suggest that it was once the path of a 
glacier. The scratches on the cliffs bear out the sug- 



THE PROCESS OF THINKING 111 

gestion; they are such as would be made by masses 
of ice scraping past these surfaces. This is explana- 
tory deduction. This is followed perhaps by antici- 
patory deduction: If there was once a glacier in the 
valley there ought to be evidence of moraines. If, then, 
further observation bears out this anticipation, the 
original suggestion is, so far, substantiated or verified. 
The investigation of the scientist is frequently of great 
complexity, but in type or principle the procedure is 
the same as in everyday life. 

Let us now attempt to analyze the chief aspects or 
phases of this procedure. The starting point is in a 
problem. There is something to be explained, some- 
thing that calls for thinking. Then comes a sugges- 
tion or hypothesis. At the outset this suggestion is 
just a tentative explanation or interpretation, a pos- 
sible meaning. The suggestion offers itself, as yet, 
without any guarantee; it is something to be tried 
out, and accepted or rejected on its merits. To accept 
a suggestion as it comes, because no rival explanation 
appears or because it is an explanation that happens 
to please or satisfy, is the mark of an uncritical, un- 
trained mind. If we proceed with a proper sense of the 
requirements of evidence, the suggestion will be used 
merely as a point of orientation, as a method for secur- 
ing adequate evidence. 

The suggestion being given, two courses are open 
to us. One is to go afield and garner relevant data, 
as we can. The suggestion then serves a twofold pur- 



112 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

pose. In the first place, it directs the observation; 
it is much easier to note significant facts, if we know 
what to look for. If, for example, the suggestion has 
occurred to us that a friend is ill, we are much more 
apt to notice his pallor, his lassitude, and other indi- 
cations of indisposition than would otherwise be the 
case. Secondly, the suggestion enables us to inter- 
pret the facts as we find them; we notice the facts 
just because we are able to interpret them. This pro- 
cedure, then, consists in scrutiny and explanation. 
The emphasis falls on the finding of corroborative 
facts, which we explain as we find them. Or, to put 
it differently, we deduce the facts after we have found 
them. The second course, on the other hand, reverses 
this order of procedure. On this basis we deduce the 
facts before we have found them. Instead of scrutin- 
izing facts, we reason out what further facts must be 
true, if the suggestion or hypothesis is true. We fore- 
cast, we anticipate, in order to learn what to look for, 
and this procedure, accordingly, consists in prediction 
and verification. 

We may, therefore, distinguish four fundamental 
traits or phases of the thinking process; viz., 

Problem, 
. Suggestion, 

Scrutiny and Explanation, 

Prediction and Verification. 
It is necessary to add a warning at once that this 
analysis must not be taken too rigidly or without 



THE PROCESS OF THINKING 113 

allowance for complexities. It may happen, for ex- 
ample, that problem and suggestion occur simultane- 
ously, as when the disturbing noise suggests immedi- 
ately, though uncertamly, the approach of a storm. 
Again, the problem and the suggestion may fall far 
apart, and much patient collection of data may be 
required for the purpose of securing a tenable sugges- 
tion. Darwin's experience is a case in point. The 
problem that he set himself to solve was to discover 
the factors that produced changes in species, but it 
was only after several years of persistent investigation 
that the suggestion of Natural Selection presented 
itself to him. In some situations the process of scru- 
tiny and explanation may suffice to warrant a conclu- 
sion, without the need of formal prediction. The sug- 
gestion, for example, that the smoke observed in the 
next block means a burning building may be suffi- 
ciently verified by the sight of the fire engines and the 
people and the firemen scaling the ladders. Or, con- 
versely, prediction and verification may overshadow 
scrutiny and explanation. An illustration is furnished 
by the procedure of certain boys on a watermelon-steal- 
ing expedition, who came upon a patch that was guarded 
by a dog. The dog was tied to a tree in the middle 
of the patch, by a rope that was long enough to 
reach the outermost edge. The difficulty was serious 
until one of the boys had the brilliant idea of 
eliminating the dog by running round and round the 
patch with the dog in hot pursuit, thus winding the 



114 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

rope about the tree and shortening its length. Scrut- 
iny was reduced to a brief inspection which showed 
the plan was feasible. Here the central feature of the 
thinking process consisted in prediction and verifica- 
tion, and this was the case also when the dog was 
subsequently unwound by a reverse process, so as to 
remove the appearance of evil. 

As this illustration suggests, prediction may come 
before explanation. In the case of the broken window, 
it is, in a sense, a matter of accident whether we first 
note that the glass is inside the room and not outside, 
or start immediately to look for a ball in the room. 
Nor has our account taken explicit notice of the fact 
that in the process of gathering evidence our hypothesis 
grows as we proceed. In the case of the ball and the 
broken windowpane, we start with '^ball thrown 
against window'^ and we end with '^ball thrown against 
window, forcing the glass into the room, gathering 
particles of glass on its surface, and rolling under the 
dresser in the corner of the room.'' It is a common 
sort of experience that the interpretation of a fact is 
a much more complex affair than we had imagined at 
the outset. Our first surmise may not be wholly 
wrong, but may need to be revised and supplemented 
indefinitely before we reach the end. Thinking re- 
quires the finding and the elaborating and the testing 
of hypotheses. And, lastly, the final meaning may be 
made accessible only through a long line of failures. 
When success crowns our efforts we may forget the 



THE PROCESS OF THINKING 115 

sweat and agony that went before, but, as a matter 
of fact, our very mistakes may have helped to produce 
the result. The false starts, the random experiment- 
ing, the trails that lead into blind alleys, may have an 
important bearing upon the outcome. Some meanings, 
indeed, could hardly be attained save along the thorny 
road of error. 

To illustrate this latter point, let us imagine our- 
selves trying to ascertain what is meant by the saying, 
^^ Truth crushed to earth shall rise again." Per- 
haps the statement will be taken to mean that while 
acts of injustice may succeed for a time, the truth 
will finally come to hght. But inquiry soon shows 
that this is very doubtful. Many crimes, for example, 
are never detected, and it is probable that many lies 
are never refuted. ^'Murder will out" is true only as 
long as we ignore the exceptions. Or does it mean 
that truth has a tendency to prevail, though it does 
not always succeed? Here again a test gives negative 
results, for this may plausibly be claimed for Hes as 
well, though not to the same degree. Or does the 
statement mean that truth remains truth, eternally 
and immutably, despite all vicissitudes of circum- 
stance? If so, we meet with the same difficulty, for 
this holds good equally for falsehood. Or it may be 
that truth will ^^rise again" in the sense that in the 
long run the course of events will tend increasingly in 
the direction of a higher social justice; in which case 
the maxim becomes the expression of faith in progress. 



I 



116 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

Whatever the interpretation in which we finally rest, 
the process of trying out different meanings is evi- 
dently just a progressive building up of a new meaning. 
We are finding out more about the matter in hand 
as we go along. Even if we fail in the end, when we 
finally give up the task, the saying has a very different 
meaning from what it had in the beginning. If we 
make up our minds at the last that the saying has no 
meaning, then that is the very meaning it now has 
for us. It is something to which we need not look 
for guidance or insight. On the other hand, if we 
succeed in giving to it a consistent and adequate 
meaning, our abortive interpretations are embedded in 
the final result. The meaning grows with each re- 
peated failure, until all is ready for the final success- 
ful attempt. In case we should take as the final 
meaning that amid all the unpunished crunes, un- 
compensated evils, and unrequited sacrifice, there is a 
continuous progress toward a higher justice, this final 
interpretation is evidently made possible and enriched 
by the failures which preceded it. These very failures 
acquaint us with the problem and enable us to see in 
the end that the final meaning is an adequate inter- 
pretation of all the relevant facts. 

This final remark points to the goal or result at 
which our thinking processes are aimed or at which 
they terminate. We gather evidence by scrutiny and 
explanation and by prediction and verification; when 
may this process be considered finished and done? 



THE PROCESS OF THINKING 117 

When is the point reached at which we may claim 
that the hypothesis or interpretation has been proved? 
In practice this question may present serious difficul- 
ties. As James says, no bell rings to tell us that we 
have proved our case, that we have arrived at truth. 
But whatever practical difficulties we may encounter, 
the logical principle that underlies the determination 
of truth is fairly simple. The investigation is com- 
pleted when the conclusion is supported by a consider- 
able body of evidence and when it is impossible to find 
any facts that conffict with the conclusion. There 
must be no evidence to support a rival hypothesis. 
In legal phraseology this is known as the principle of 
Reasonable Doubt. 

This principle is of vital importance in every process 
of inference. It is always possible, of course, to doubt 
a conclusion on the ground that if we knew more about 
the facts in the case we might find that we were wrong. 
This sort of doubt, however, is not evidence of a crit- 
ical mind; if it is a characteristic trait of an indi- 
vidual, it is more properly to be regarded as the 
symptom of a mental disease. In a murder trial, for 
example, this kind of doubt would nullify any body of 
evidence, however cogent. Perhaps some important 
circumstance has been left out of account, perhaps the 
accused was afflicted with a temporary brain storm, 
perhaps the witnesses were suffering from hallucinations, 
or for some other reason did not see the events as they 
actually occurred. Accordingly, the principle is laid 



118 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

down that a doubt has no claim to consideration unless 
it is a reasonable doubt; i.e., a doubt which is based on 
some fact or circumstance that might be used as evi- 
dence to establish a contrary conclusion. The appeal 
must be to actual experience. If it can be shown from 
experience that observation under the circumstances 
in question is frequently unreliable, or that the ac- 
/ cused had acted in ways that might be taken as evi- 
dence of temporary aberration, the doubt becomes 
reasonable, since it has specific evidence to stand on. 
Unless such doubt can be eliminated by further in- 
vestigation, the conclusion is not fully established, but 
remains, at best, a matter of probability. Proof re- 
quires the removal of reasonable doubt, and the truth 
of a suggestion or idea consists in its ability to organ- 
ize all the relevant facts into a body of evidence to 
the exclusion of reasonable doubt. iw 

So far no reference has been made to the distinc- 
tion between induction and deduction. Perhaps the 
impression given by the preceding discussion is to the 
effect that a disproportionate emphasis and importance 
has been given to deduction. In scrutiny and explana- 
tion the finding of relevant facts becomes an occasion 
for deduction, while in prediction and verification the 
process is obviously deductive in character. Where, 
then, does induction find a place? Does this mean 
that the time-honored distinction between induction 
and deduction must be discarded? 

Whether the distinction be retained or not, it is 



THE PROCESS OF THINKING 119 

evident that our present standpoint does not permit 
us to regard induction and deduction as separate forms 
of thinking. They are at most distinguishable aspects 
of a process that presents the same general features 
everywhere. That a reinterpretation is necessary ap- 
pears further if we look closely into the customary 
definitions of induction and deduction. According 
to the prevailing definitions, induction proceeds from 
particular facts to a general law or principle, while 
deduction proceeds from general principles to par- 
ticular facts. To begin with induction, the dictum, 
from the particular to the general, appears to leave 
out many cases that would ordinarily be classed as 
induction. Thus the proof that A killed B, or that 
the valley of the Mississippi was once an inland sea, 
is induction, even though what is proved is a particular 
fact. The proof undoubtedly involves various general- 
izations or laws, but these enter into the situation only 
for the sake of establishing something that is not a 
principle or law. Similarly deduction does not neces- 
sarily consist in application of a principle to a particu- 
lar fact. Thackeray's story of the priest ^ is a case in 
point. ' ^ An old abbe, talking among a party of intimate 
friends, happened to say, ^A priest has strange experi- 
ences: why, ladies, my first penitent was a murderer!' 
Upon this, the principal nobleman of the neighborhood 
enters the room. 'Ah, Abb^, here you are; do you 
know, ladies, I was the Abbe's first penitent, and I 

* Quoted by Bosanquet, Essentials of Logic, p. 140. 



120 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

promise you my confession astonished him V The in- 
ference from these two statements is deductive in char- 
acter, in spite of the fact that neither of them is the 
statement of a principle or law. 

The difficulty is increased if we inquire what is 
meant by ^^from'^ and ^Ho" in these definitions. If a 
scientist gathers cases in order to prove that all water 
is H2O or that vaccination prevents smallpox, we can 
scarcely suppose that he first gathers his cases and then 
makes the inference. The cases are gathered in order 
to prove an antecedent suggestion; the inquiry does 
not lead up to the suggestion, but is guided by the^ 
suggestion, and the purpose in gathering the cases is 
simply to prove that the suggestion is a sound inter- 
pretation of the facts. As was pointed out earlier, 
until a suggestion occurs we have simply a problem; 
we are not yet thinking, but merely ^^ trying to think." 
In what sense, then, do we go from the particular to 
the general? Or we may take a deductive inference; 
as, *' Socrates is a man, and therefore he is mortal." 
In this inference the major premise, '^AU men are mor- 
tal," is not stated, but is said to be implied. The fact 
that this premise is not stated would not, presumably, 
affect the deductive character of the inference. There 
are many such cases, where the major premise is not 
merely omitted in the verbal formulation of the infer- 
ence, but is not present to consciousness at all. This 
is conclusively evident from the fact that it may take 
considerable reflection to discover the hidden premise 



THE PROCESS OF THINKING 121 

upon which an inference really depends. But if so, 
in what sense can we be said to ^'go" from the uni- 
versal to the particular? If it be argued that we are 
really applying a principle to a particular case, whether 
we are aware of the fact or not, and that this is what 
makes the inference a case of deduction, we seem to be 
committed to the conclusion that all inference is de- 
duction. The proof, for example, that vaccination pre- 
vents smallpox depends upon the application (whether 
we are aware of it or not) of the principle that under 
certain specifiable conditions a sound conclusion can 
be drawn, or of the principle that the future will be like 
the past. Unless we can furnish some other interpre- 
tation, deduction swallows up everything and the dis- 
tinction between deduction and induction disappears. 
The import of this criticism is not that the distinc- 
tion has no validity, but that it must be reinterpreted 
in the interests of clear thinking and sound practice. 
In the first place, the general or universal with which 
we are concerned in thinking is not necessarily a prin- 
ciple or law. It is a name for the suggestion or hy- 
pothesis by which our inquiry is guided, and the 
suggestion is called by this name because it serves to 
knit the facts together in a common meaning; it applies 
to all the facts of the case, extends to all of them, but 
is not itself one of these facts. By particular, on the 
other hand, is meant the facts that are thus united so 
as to make them all serve as evidence of the truth of 
the suggestion. Secondly, the distinction between indue- 



122 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

tion and deduction turns on the use that we make of 
the suggestion or hypothesis. Given the suggestion, 
we may proceed to collect evidence in either of two 
ways. We may undertake to find facts that can be 
explained by means of the suggestion, or we may pre- 
dict, on the basis of the suggestion, what facts we shall 
find. In either case, to be sure, we employ deduction, 
since we combine or relate meanings in such a way as 
to show that certain facts are ^'just what you would 
expect." But in the one case the deduction is made 
after the fact is found; in the other case it is made 
before the fact is found. The procedure is varied be- 
cause some kinds of evidence cannot be predicted but 
must be found, whereas other kinds of evidence must 
be predicted in order to be found. In the case of a 
robbery, for example, we could not predict that the 
criminal would lose a glove or button in the room, 
or that he would tear his coat and leave a bit of cloth 
on a projecting nail in climbing through the window. 
These facts must be discovered through observation 
before we can build a theory around them; i.e., the 
mental reconstruction, the deductive process,, cannot 
take place until after these facts have been found. 
This is the true meaning of the saying that we go from 
the particular to the universal or the general. On the 
other hand, when we make a mental reconstruction of 
the occurrence we can fill in certain details which have 
not yet been discovered, and which might easily be 
overlooked if they were not pointed out in advance. 



THE PROCESS OF THINKING 123 

If our hypothetical robber got in through the window, 
there must be tracks in the soft soil outside and there 
must be fingerprints on the casement. Moreover, it 
is likely that the stolen goods will be found in some 
pawnshop in the city. These details are filled in to 
complete the picture. If we assume that certain things 
took place, we are obliged to think that certain other 
things likewise took place. A new field of discovery 
is thus opened up; and when we proceed in this 
fashion we are said to go from the general, — i.e., from 
the meaning or suggestion — to the particular case. 

The reason why induction has seemed so different 
from deduction and so independent of it is presum- 
ably that the gathering of facts has loomed up large 
in the sciences. We all know that a suggestion may 
be supported by a considerable body of evidence and 
yet prove to be erroneous. The untenability of a sug- 
gestion comes to light when we discover facts that are 
incompatible with the suggestion. In order to avoid 
error it is necessary to canvass the facts carefully, and 
for this purpose science has built up an elaborate 
technique and has invented many devices. To prove 
that vaccination prevents smallpox, or that ilHteracy 
is connected with crime, the scientist has recourse to 
statistical methods; to prove that memory functions 
best under certain conditions or that certain drugs 
have certain effects, he resorts to experiment; to 
gather the facts that he needs in order to secure a 
suggestion or verify a prediction, he applies the micro- 



124 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

scope, the telescope, the test tube and innumerable other 
appliances. To the popular eye the most prominent of 
these methods is, or at any rate has been, the gathering of 
cases, with the result that induction has been defined in 
terms of this method. But if we are to base our con- 
ception of induction on the procedure of science, we 
must make it more inclusive. A process of inference 
is inductive, then, in so far as it involves a certain 
plan or technique for handling facts, and induc- 
tion may be defined as a name for the methods for 
arranging or regulating evidence. 

As has already been indicated, deduction is a cer- 
tain process of manipulating concepts. Although 
common enough, this process, when analyzed, takes 
on an appearance of mystery. This mystery centers 
on the fact that concepts have implications. If we 
combine meanings in a certain way, we get certain 
further meanings, which ^^ follow" by a peculiar neces- 
sity. The process is carried on, not with things, but 
with meanings, which serve as substitutes for the 
things. In explaining the bit of cloth on the project- 
ing nail, we do not combine or relate the actual robber 
with the physical window, but we combine the con- 
cept ^'robber" with the concept ^^ scraping past nail,'^ 
and as a result we get the further meaning of torn 
clothes. It is just because man can deal so freely 
with substitute objects that he is intellectually supreme 
on his planet. In chemical processes, certain sub- 
stances are united to form a new substance; and this 



THE PROCESS OF THINKING 125 

furnishes a certain analogy to what takes place in 
deduction, where we combine meanings in order to 
get other meanings. These new meanings are said to 
be implied in the old ones, and deduction, accordingly, 
may be defined as the process of drawing out the im- 
plications of meanings. 

It remains to trace out the bearing of this stand- 
point on educational theory and practice. Since edu- 
cation is concerned preeminently with the training of 
the mind, our conception of how the mind operates is 
bound to have a determining influence, for good or for 
evil. The significance for education of this interpreta- 
tion of thinking is a matter of some complexity and 
difficulty, and the discussion of it must be left to the 
following chapter. 

REFERENCES 

CoLViN, S. S. — The Learning Process, chs. 20 and 21. 
CoLviN, S. S. and Bagley, W. C. — Human Behavior^ ch. 18. 
Creighton, J. E. — Ari Introductory Logic, ch. 25. 
Dewey, J. — How We Think, chs. 6 and 7. 

— Democracy and Education, ch. 11. 
James, W. — Principles of Psychology, Vol. II, ch. 22. 
Lloyd Morgan. — An Introduction to Comparative Psychology, ch. 16. 
, Miller, I. — The Psychology of Thinking, chs. 15-20. 
PiLLSBURY, W. — The Psychology of Reasoning, chs. 3, 6, 7, 8. 



CHAPTER VII 
TRAINING IN THINKING 

At the present time it requires no extended argu- 
ment to justify the importance of training in think- 
ing. The sentiment against the memoriter method of 
learning is fairly unanimous. In some cases the reac- 
tion has perhaps gone to seed, but at all events it is 
distinctly in the ascendancy. This emphasis upon 
thinking has led to the analysis of the recitation into 
'* formal steps of instruction/^ for the guidance of the 
teacher in developing the thinking of the pupils. The 
best known of these analyses is that of Herb art and 
his followers, who have developed in considerable de- 
tail what now goes by the name of the ^'inductive 
development lesson." This analysis has been supple- 
mented by the ^'deductive development lesson," in 
order to provide training for both inductive and de- 
ductive thinking. 

The Herbartian development lesson, in its current 
form, provides for the following steps: preparation 
(leading up to a statement of the aim); presentation; 
comparison and abstraction; generalization; applica- 
tion. To borrow Bagley's illustration, let us suppose 
that the purpose of the lesson is to develop the prin- 
ciple that vapor condenses with a fall of temperature. 

126 



TRAINING IN THINKING 127 

The pupil is first reminded of certain familiar experi- 
ences, such as the condensation of breath exhaled on a 
windowpane and the condensation of the vapor from 
a tea-kettle. This is the stage of preparation, which 
terminates in the question or problem why this hap- 
pens. Then comes presentation, which consists in tak- 
ing up new cases, such as may be provided by simple 
experiments ; e.g., breathing on hot and cold surfaces 
or filling a pitcher with ice water so as to produce a 
gathering of moisture on the surface of the pitcher. 
This is followed by comparison and abstraction, which 
takes particular account of the fact that vapor some- 
times becomes visible and sometimes does not, the 
purpose being to connect the presence and absence of 
this phenomenon with the concomitant presence and 
absence of a fall in temperature. The formulation of 
this connection is the step of generalization. The final 
step of application consists in interpreting some fur- 
ther fact not previously considered, such as the forma- 
tion of clouds. The generalization and application 
could then be used as the preparatory step of a lesson 
on precipitation. 

This scheme is called the inductive development 
lesson because it is intended for the development of 
principles, laws, rules, and definitions through a study 
of individual facts. Since induction is but half the 
story, however, there is needed also a deductive devel- 
opment lesson, which works in the opposite direction ; 
viz., from principles to facts or to less general prin- 



128 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

ciples. The process is divided into three parts, or 
aspects, the first deahng with data (including facts and 
principles), the second with inference, the third with 
verification. The facts are furnished by the situation 
that calls for thinking, while the principles accrue to 
us from previous experience. In the case of the broken 
window, for example, the appearance of the window 
and the distribution of the glass are the facts to which 
we apply certain principles concerning the fragility of 
glass, and concerning momentum and gravitation, 
these principles being suppUed by memory. These 
facts and principles enable us to infer the cause of 
what is observed (explanatory deduction), or to infer 
certain further effects (anticipatory deduction). The 
inference that the damage was done by means of a 
baseball is explanatory, while the further inference 
that the ball must be somewhere in the room is antici- 
patory. Or, to recur to our previous illustration, the 
suggestion that vapor condenses with a fall of tem- 
perature can be used both to explain the facts that 
are already at hand and to predict further facts not 
yet observed; e.g., that snow while melting in a pan 
over the fire, or that liquid air, when released, will pro- 
duce vapor. An anticipation of this sort could then, 
of course, be subjected to the test of experiment so as 
to verify the inference. 

The illustration of the vapor was intended, indeed, 
to illustrate the inductive rather than the deductive 
development lesson. It was introduced just now under 



TRAINING IN THINKING 129 

the latter head with malice aforethought, in order to 
raise the issue as to the real distinction between the 
processes labeled respectively induction and deduction. 
Apparently the distinction turns on the fact that in 
what is called induction the principle or suggestion by 
which the given facts are to be explained must some- 
how be found before its applicability or adequacy can 
be tested, whereas in deduction the explanation is at 
hand and simply awaits application and testing. If 
the pupil does not yet know that vapor condenses 
with a fall of temperature, his task, under the guidance 
of the teacher, is first to evolve this explanation and 
then to test or verify it. After the explanation has 
occurred to him in some way, he must review the 
facts to assure himself of its applicability, and he is 
also supposed to make further applications. In de- 
duction, on the other hand, the key to the problem 
is given in advance, in the form of principles that are 
already known, and the work that is to be done is 
confined to application or testing. 

Stated differently, the distinction between induction 
and deduction seems to depend on the question whether 
the problem occurs with or without a suggested ex- 
planation. Sometimes the problem alone is given at 
the outset, further facts must be gathered in order 
to secure a working hypothesis, and the name induc- 
tion seems to refer only to the process of finding the 
hypothesis. After it has been found, there is no dif- 
ference between induction and deduction. Whether 



130 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

the suggestion, when it comes, is a new generalization 
or something that was already known, appears to make 
no appreciable difference in the procedure. When the 
suggestion has once arrived, it is used to explain the 
facts already at hand and to forecast further facts, and 
for this purpose it makes no difference whether the 
suggestion is something new or old. Besides, there 
are all degrees of novelty. In a certain sense the dis- 
covery of the law of gravitation was just an extension 
of the principle that unsupported bodies fall, and the 
discovery that air is a fluid was an extension of the 
law of liquids so as to make it include air. When a prin- 
ciple is thus extended it may, indeed, undergo consider- 
able modification. When Newton included the moon in 
the class of falling bodies, he was obliged to reinter- 
pret the notion of ^^ falling body.'^ Falling, as it turned 
out, had reference, not to an absolute ^^down,'' but to 
the tendency of bodies to draw together. The relation 
of bodies was conceived as more like that of two boats 
in the water, the occupants of which are trying to 
bring them together by pulling on opposite ends of a 
rope. In the case of the discovery that air is a fluid 
the transformation was much less extensive. The 
moral is that the inductive character of a thinking 
process cannot be determined by inquiring whether 
the aim of the process is the discovery of a '^new'' 
principle or law. Whether or not a new principle is 
involved is particularly irrelevant since the suggestion, 
when once obtained, functions without regard to this 



TRAINING IN THINKING 131 

question. The procedure is the same in either case, 
so that there would be no justification for maintaining 
a special inductive method to be used for inquiries 
aimed at the discovery of new principles or laws. 

If it can be maintained that the traditional distinc- 
tion between the inductive and deductive development 
lesson simmers down to the question whether the prob- 
lem suggests an explanation at once or only after a 
search has been made for it, we are obliged to face the 
further question whether this distinction warrants the 
attempt to cultivate two different methods. As a mat- 
ter of fact, the gathering of data in order to secure an 
explanation usually consists in trying out a series of 
suggestions until the right one is found. In other 
words, even the search for an explanation is very much 
like what happens after the suggestion is found and is 
being applied. Moreover, the belief that induction is 
different from deduction and independent of it ob- 
scures the fact that the two are bound up together. 
If we do not recognize the presence of deduction in 
what is called induction, we naturally do not try to 
cultivate it. The distinction thus has an element of 
danger in it, and besides tends to confuse the teacher 
who attempts to observe the distinction. In practice it 
is frequently difficult to tell whether a given process of 
thinking is inductive or deductive, which is natural 
enough, since it is both. As was explained in the preced- 
ing chapter, induction is not a separate process at all, 
but is simply the name of one phase or aspect of the 



132 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

complete act of thought. An investigator, for example, 
may gather cases of infantile paralysis, either to get a 
working hypothesis or to test a hypothesis that he has 
in mind. Besides gathering cases he may examine the 
heart action of the sick persons, make blood tests by 
chemical methods, and the like. In all this work he is us- 
ing certain methods to arrange the facts so that they will 
serve either to suggest or to test a hypothesis. Wher- 
ever we find this methodical handling of data we apply 
the name induction. It must be remembered, how- 
ever, that this does not go on apart from deductive 
processes. As he gathers his facts, the investigator is 
constantly entertaining suggestions or making guesses, 
which he uses to interpret the facts aheady at hand, 
or to anticipate further facts. Since induction and de- 
duction are so closely knit together, the attempt to 
use two different methods is likely to be more harmful 
than helpful. The teacher will be more effective if he 
tries to develop all-round thinking, no matter what 
the subject matter may be, in connection with which 
the thinking takes place. 

With this conclusion in mind, let us now take a 
second look at the Herbartian Five Steps. We may 
note first that this scheme is not to be taken as an 
analysis of thinking, but as a plan or method by which 
thinking is to be trained. But it is evident that the 
Five Steps — Preparation, Presentation, Comparison, 
Generalization, Application — must correspond, in some 
measure, to the actual procedure of thinking, if the 



TRAINING IN THINKING 133 

method is to be a safe guide. Do we, in fact, find 
such a correspondence? 

At first sight this correspondence does not seem very 
obvious. Thinking, according to our previous analy- 
sis, starts with a problem, but the Herbartian plan 
makes no specific mention of a problem. To all ap- 
pearances, the stage of preparation has no reference to 
thinking at all, so far as the pupil is concerned. It is 
supposed to consist of nothing but a review of what is 
already known, without any suggestion of application 
or of comparison with other things. Being just a re- 
hearsal of what is already familiar, it has neither the 
charm of novelty nor the zest that springs from the 
sense of a problem. Consequently, also, there is little 
incentive to attention and concentration, and the per- 
formance easily becomes tedious. Secondly, the plan 
seems to require that the steps be arranged in a more 
or less fixed order, whereas thinking does not follow 
any fixed order. In explaining the condensation of 
vapor, for example, we are involved in comparison 
from the start. The breath on the windowpane and 
the vapor from the kettle must be seen as two in- 
stances of the same thing or the proceedings have no 
unity or coherence. The comparison, in this case, is 
what stimulates the attention and sets the problem. 
Perhaps some bright pupil will suggest at once that 
condensation is due to the fact that vapor settles on 
solid objects. This suggestion, it will be observed, in- 
volves not only comparison, but abstraction and gen- 



134 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

eralization. The common feature, '^ solid objects," is 
abstracted and is stated in generalized form; viz., 
'Vapor settles on solid objects.'^ In support of this 
suggestion he may cite some further fact, such as the 
hoarfrost on the roof on a cold morning, or the '' frozen 
breath" on a man's moustache in winter. Here we 
have the stage of Application; and all this may occur 
near the beginning of the lesson, before Preparation 
and Presentation are completed and before the true 
explanation has been discovered. 

The illustration will perhaps serve to show that the 
order of the steps is not to be taken too seriously. To 
repress suggestions until the stage of comparison and 
abstraction is reached is to become pedantic and me- 
chanical, and has the effect of discouraging the spirit 
of inquiry. On the other hand, if we try out the 
suggestion that vapor settles on solid objects, and show 
by reference to the steam kettle and by the fact that 
vapor does not condense on a man's moustache in 
summer that the suggestion is inadequate, the case 
is very different. The consideration of the suggestion 
gives the pupil the feeling that he is cooperating in the 
solution of the problem; moreover, the discovery that 
the explanation does not work brings in more facts, so 
that the plot thickens, and the pupil is ''on edge" 
to try again. By the introduction of further facts, 
such as the difference between breathing on a hot and 
on a cold glass, further suggestions may be elicited. 
Whether the right suggestion comes finally from the 



TRAINING IN THINKING 135 

pupil or from the teacher, the attitude of inquiring 
and testing is maintained. Whether the suggestion is 
tenable or not, the proof consists in more comparison 
and application. Our only safe method is the devel- 
opment of the problem itself. We move back and 
forth over the field; the same step may occur a num- 
ber of times and the order of the steps may vary 
indefinitely. Inquiry is essentially experimental in 
character ; we follow any lead that looks promising, and 
even if it fails to give us the solution that we seek, we 
come back to the starting point with a better insight 
into the nature of the problem itself and consequently 
with a better prospect of succeeding the next time. 
Even if the solution of the problem is finally furnished 
by the teacher, as necessity or expediency frequently 
requires, this preliminary canvassing of the problem 
may be the best preparation for an insight into the 
meaning of the problem and its solution. In any 
event a rigid, mechanical adherence to prescribed steps 
is bound to defeat the purpose of providing training 
in thinking. 

These comments, however, are not intended to mean 
that the Herbartian plan is of no value. It may serve 
a useful purpose as guide to the teacher in organizing 
beforehand the material to be presented. The step of 
preparation means that the familiar experiences of the 
pupil form the proper starting point. They furnish 
the background with which the new knowledge must 
be assimilated, and it is easy to fall into the error of 



136 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

assuming more of a background than the pupil actually 
possesses. To make this mistake is to "talk over their 
heads." Presentation has to do with the new mate- 
rial that is to be introduced, such as experiments, maps, 
pictures, or other material. Comparisons and applica- 
tions must be made and the conclusions formulated. 
All this must be considered beforehand in order to 
make sure that the work of the classroom will con- 
nect with the actual experience of the pupil and 
will enlarge and transform that experience so as to 
incorporate the new facts and principles. Without 
some such preparation there can be no effective teach- 
ing, and the Herbartian plan may perhaps be used to 
make such preparation more systematic and thorough. 
But the use that is to be made of the preparation must 
depend upon the way in which the subject happens 
to develop. Such development is never twice the 
same. Very often the function of the teacher may 
consist largely in raising '^reasonable doubts,'' after 
the subject is once under way. That is, he may help 
along the development of the subject by bringing in 
further facts, old or new, which the suggestion or hy- 
pothesis that is provisionally accepted must be able to 
explain. This corresponds to what was previously 
called scrutiny and explanation. Or he may invite 
predictions by inquiring what the given hypothesis 
would lead one to expect under certain conditions. 
In short, training in thinking requires the use of edu- 
cational material so as to stimulate suggestion, ex- 



TRAINING IN THINKING 137 

planation, and prediction, and this cannot be done 
by adherence to a detailed program antecedently laid 
down, but only along the zigzag route by which actual 
thinking advances to its conclusions. 

It is sometimes supposed that thinking is encour- 
aged when pupils are told to think things out for 
themselves. But thinking cannot go on in a vacuum; 
unless there are facts to furnish suggestions and fur- 
ther facts to invite explanation by means of the sug- 
gestion, or to prompt the making of predictions, there 
can be no progress. When the pupil is unable to pro- 
ceed, the alternative is not to dish up the whole sub- 
ject as so much information, but to furnish the need- 
ful facts which will make it possible for the pupil to 
go on once more. The teacher's function is much like 
that of Socrates, who conceived it to be his mission to 
irritate his countrymen to thought by asking ques- 
tions and by making reference to facts which they 
were disposed to overlook. More often the peculiarity 
of the thinking process is ignored altogether; the 
teacher conceives it to be his business to impart the 
subject in the logical form in which it is laid out in the 
textbook, and is disposed to regard questions and sug- 
gestions on the part of the pupils as vagaries and dis- 
tracting interruptions. The result of such teaching is 
not simply that thinking remains undeveloped, but 
probably that thinking is less effective than it would 
have been without such teaching. The pupil is trained 
to accept things on the basis of authority and to re- 



138 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

press the tendency to question or investigate, and the 
result that may naturally be expected is that this dis- 
position will be carried over into affairs of life. 

The need for training in thinking is doubtless one 
of the reasons for the interest at the present time in 
what is known as the ^^project method/' In this method 
it is attempted both to utilize the spontaneous ten- 
dencies of the child and to provide a favorable setting 
for the development of thinking. The attempt is 
made to set the pupil to work on problems in their 
'^natural setting/' which usually means that the pupil 
is engaged in some undertaking in which he is inter- 
ested and for the completion of which he finds it nec- 
essary to look up data, make experiments, and in 
other ways acquire knowledge. (^As a protest the 
movement in the direction of the project method is 
undoubtedly of significance. As a distinctive method 
or doctrine it suffers from the defect of a fundamental 
ambiguity^ Up to the present it has not been made 
clear whether the distinctive feature of the doctrine is 
the idea that learning takes place most effectively 
when knowledge is sought as a means to an end and 
not as an end in itself, or the idea that effective learning 
requires a '^natural setting." The typical problems of 
the method have a ^'natural setting" and they are also 
^^ practical" problems, in the sense that learning is 
incidental to doing something else, such as making a 
table or a boat, which requires computation and meas- 
urement, raising seed corn, which requires knowledge 



TRAINING IN THINKING 139 

of seeds and of cultivation, and similar problems. 

y^'here is no doubt that such problems may have con- 
3rable educational value, but this is not the same 
as saying that knowledge must always be treated as a 
means to an end and not as an end in itself) The 
natural inquisitiveness of children suggests that it is 
not impossible to cultivate knowledge for its own sake. 
A boy whose knowledge of number relations is confined 
to what he acquires in the solution of merely practical 
problems does not have the mastery of numbers that 
is required for the purposes of adult life. To get such 
mastery he must develop a love for numbers for their 
own sake; he must be interested in number relations 
on their own account. This is necessary in order to 
give knowledge the general quality by which it be- 
comes detached from particular applications and is 
made available for other purposes. Unless it is thus 
detached and made an end in itself, it does not take 
on the ^ logical organization^^ that is necessary for 
effectiveness. Practical problems may be valuable 
grist for the educational mill, but if they do not help 
to develop an immediate interest in certain kinds of 
knowledge they have not accomplished their mission) 
Without this interest in knowledge for its own sake it 
is impossible to secure the margin of information that 
is necessary for dealing with future emergencies; or, to 
put it differently, without this immediate interest there 
is no adequate provision for future growth. 
The demand that problems be presented in their 



140 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

natural setting likewise has a certain obscurity. In so 
far as it refers to the carrying on of problems in home 
surroundings, away from school routine and school 
conditions, the meaning is clear enough. But it is 
also advocated as a school method, in which case it 
seems to mean one of two things: (a) that all prob- 
lems must be of a ^'practical" sort, as is normally the 
case with problems that arise outside of the school- 
room; or (b) that all problems must relate to the 
actual experience of the pupil, and not become just 
'^school problems,'' in which verbal proficiency takes 
the place of insight. Physics or history, for example, 
must give new meanings to our everyday world, if 
they are to have a natural setting. The first of these 
alternatives has already been discussed. The second 
gives an interpretation to the project method that 
leaves no room for the claim of novelty or of distinc- 
tiveness as a method. By ^^ natural setting" we can 
scarcely mean that conditions must be the same as 
out of school, as though the use of improved facilities 
in the schoolroom were something to be deplored. 
Apparently, then, it must refer either to the aim of 
study as practical and not theoretical, or else to the 
relation of what is studied to the previous experience 
of the pupil. 

The advantages of providing training in thinking 
have already been indicated, more or less indirectly, 
in the foregoing discussion. If our material is so or- 
ganized as to provoke thinking, we have provided the 



TRAINING IN THINKING 141 

condition for intellectual growth. Mental develop- 
ment requires a continuous reconstruction of past ex- 
perience so as to provide a place for the new material, 
and this reconstruction is the process of thinking. As 
a result of this process the new becomes assimilated to 
the old, and the old takes on a deeper meaning than 
it had before. When, for example, Darwin formulated 
the principle of natural selection, the discovery involved 
a reinterpretation of what had previously been known; 
old facts were seen in a new light. This is exactly what 
happens in the Ufe of every individual, in so far as new 
experiences are brought into relation with former ex- 
periences through the process of thinking. Unless there 
is such a process of reconstruction, through the medium 
of thinking, learning degenerates into memorizing. 
Pupils often memorize and recite with an almost fatal 
facility, thus creating the impression that they under- 
stand what they are saying. Sometimes teachers un- 
consciously encourage evil habits of this kind, by 
insisting on recitations of the touch-and-go sort, and 
exhibiting impatience with the more thoughtful pupil, 
who, precisely because he is more thoughtful, tends to 
hesitate because he is engaged in tracing the bearings 
or applications of a question or problem. To what 
absurdities such training may lead is exemplified in the 
following anecdote told by Horace Mann: ^ 

''It recently happened, in a school within my own 
knowledge, that a class of small scholars in geography, 

^ Life and Works of Horace Mann, Vol. II, p. 68. 



142 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

on being examined respecting the natural divisions of 
the earth — its continents, oceans, gulfs, etc., — an- 
swered all the questions with admirable precision and 
promptness. They were then asked, by a visitor, some 
general questions about their lesson, amongst others, 
whether they had ever seen the earth about which they 
had been reading; and they unanimously declared in 
good faith that they never had. '' 

The first natural result, then, of training in think- 
ing may be expressed by saying either that it prevents 
verbalism, or that it organizes and relates our 
knowledge so as to give meaning to our statements. 
Then there is the further gain of training in the meth- 
ods of thinking. In the sciences the specialist acquires 
a sort of sixth sense, which tells him whether a con- 
clusion is likely to prove true, or which warns him 
against a conclusion as probably erroneous. ''The 
doctor will feel that the patient is doomed, the dentist 
will have a premonition that the tooth will break, 
though neither can articulate a reason for his forebod- 
ing. The reason lies embedded, but not yet laid bare, 
in all the countless previous cases dimly suggested by 
the actual one, all calling up the same conclusion, which 
the adept thus finds himself swept on to, he knows not 
how or why.'^ ^ But the same sort of thing is true of 
other persons as well, though perhaps in a less strik- 
ing way. A person trained in thinking has similar 
premonitions. He may feel that there is something 
* James, W. — Principles of Psychology, Vol. II, p. 365. 



TRAINING IN THINKING 143 

wrong about a conclusion, even though he is unable, 
at the moment, to give a reason for his misgiving. 
He may have a dim feeHng that the language is am- 
biguous, that there is some sort of questionable as- 
sumption underlying the inference, or that the com- 
parisons have not been made with proper care. His 
previous experience with such matters comes to his 
assistance and warns him to be careful. Some features 
of the matter look dubious, and these invite further 
scrutiny. In short, because he has practiced thinking 
in the past, he is able to think more effectively now. 
He knows better what to look for, and he is also better 
able to judge when a matter has been satisfactorily 
proved. 

Lastly, there is the attitude of open-mindedness, 
which is the supreme achievement of training in 
thinking. In matters that require thinking we are fre- 
quently predisposed to take sides on the question at 
issue. When our feelings become engaged, it may be very 
difficult to maintain the attitude of impartial inquiry. We 
are too eager to have the question settled oin* way to be 
prepared to examine with care what may be said on 
the other side. Our natural disposition is that of a 
partisan, and not that of the impartial investigator. 
The latter attitude is one that must normally be ac- 
quired by systematic repression of disturbing feelings 
during the process of mquiry, by cultivating the dis- 
position to give consideration to all the angles of the 
question, before reaching a decision. In the field of 



144 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

the sciences this requirement has a sanctity akin to 
that of a religious duty. The obhgation of education 
is to give it a similar authority in the dealings of men 
with one another. If we were habitually as much con- 
cerned to understand intimately the case of our oppo- 
nent as we usually are to prove or justify our own, 
the chief obstacle to the practice of justice and of 
cooperation would be removed, and the solution of 
the perplexing problems of the day might safely be 
left to take care of itself. 

REFERENCES 

Bagley, W. C. — The Educative Process, chs. 19, 20. 

BoNSER, F. G. — The Elementary School Curriculum, chs. 6, 7, 8. 

Charters, W. W. — Methods of Teaching, chs 19, 20. 

Dewey, J. — How We Think, ch. 15. 

KiLPATRicK, W. H. — "The Project Method"; Teachers College 

Record, Vol. XIX. 
Strayer, G. D. — Brief Course in the Teaching Process, chs. 5, 6. 
Thorndike, E. L. — Principles of Teaching, ch. 10. 



■%. 



CHAPTER VIII 
THE TRANSFER OF TRAINING » 

The question of the transfer of training is one of 
those problems which seem to take a new lease on life 
with each successive generation. In spite of the fact 
that it is now several centuries old, this problem, to 
all appearances, still enjoys a tolerable state of health 
and vigor. As usually stated, the doctrine of transfer 
means that mental power or mastery gained in one 
subject or field of activity is applicable to any other 
field. It does not much matter in which connection 
we cultivate our powers of reasoning, memory, imagi- 
nation, etc., provided only the thing is done. A power 
thus cultivated can then be used for other purposes 
or ends, in much the same way that strength devel- 
oped by boxing or wood chopping gives greater effi- 
ciency in pushing a wheelbarrow or handling trunks. 

The doctrine and the illustration are alike familiar. 
In its traditional form the doctrine was based on the 
belief that there were ^^ general powers" or ^^ faculties" 
which could be trained in much the same way that a 
muscle is trained. At one time, this belief had con- 
siderable plausibility. It was supported by the '^fac- 

1 This chapter is based on an article by the writer, entitled "A Re- 
interpretation of Transfer of Training," in Educational Administraiion 
and Supervision, Vol. V, p. 105. 

145 



lie 



FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 



ulty psychology," inherited from the age of scholas- 
ticism, and it also found considerable support, in ap- 
pearance at least, from the facts of experience. A man 
who has learned to work will stay on a new job with 
less boredom and impatience than one who has not 
trained himself to follow a routine; he seems to have 
acquired some general capacity for holding himself to 
the task in hand. In the same way a person with a 
general education is able to act more intelligently 
when confronted with a new task, such as managing 
a farm or a store. If a muscle is used during the day 
it grows stronger over night, with the result that it is 
more effective the next day. By analogy the effect of 
training is to make our powers or faculties grow stronger 
or more effective, no matter for what purposes they 
may be employed. 

In the course of time, however, this explanation lost 
much of its plausibility. In the first place, it did not 
seem to square with the conclusions of later-day psy- 
chology. In the light of new discoveries it became 
impossible to believe in the existence of such powers 
or faculties.^ Secondly, it was found that the theory 
does not work in the way that one would naturally 
expect. A sailor who has grown weatherwise in ob- 
serving the sky and the sea does not, for all his training 
in observation, seem to become more expert in observ- 
ing the styles of dresses or of architecture; a man 

* The reasons for the rejection of faculties are given in more detail 
in Chapter IX. 



THE TRANSFER OF TRAINING 147 

who is trained in mathematics does not thereby be- 
come noticeably more skilful in figuring out the moves 
in politics or in a horse trade; and memorizing the 
forms of a conjugation has no appreciable bearing on 
the ability to remember the items on a grocery list or 
the requirements of good manners at a social gathering. 
Experimental evidence has shown that the doctrine 
took much for granted that was not true to fact. 
'^ Accuracy in spelling is independent of accuracy in 
multiplication, and quickness in arithmetic is not found 
with quickness in marking misspelled words; ability 
to pick the word 'boy^ on a printed page is no guar- 
antee that the child will be able to pick out a geo- 
metrical form with as great ease and accuracy." ^ 

As a result of all this, there has developed a disposi- 
tion to be skeptical about transfer of training. It has 
been argued that all training is ''specific'^ and not 
'^general," by which is meant that a person may be 
trained so as to be observant and resourceful within 
a certain field, but that this training will not increase 
his efficiency in other fields. A boy may learn about 
plumbing or banking, but this training will not make 
him a better farmer or grocer, except in so far as the 
training required for these different occupations hap- 
pens to be identical. Training must be specific, be- 
cause abilities are specific. Instead of dealing with 

*Norsworthy, N. — "Formal Training" in New York Teachers^ Mono- 
graphs, 1902, Vol. IV, pp. 96-99. Quoted by Bagley, Educative 
Process, p. 208. 



148 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

faculties, we must concern ourselves with specific abili- 
ties, such as ability in spelling, writing, chemistry, 
Latin, and trigonometry. More likely than not, these 
specific abilities will be found upon analysis to be made 
up of groups of other abilities still more specific and 
fundamental. Ability in a language, for example, in- 
cludes a sense for grammatical and rhetorical construc- 
tion, a memory for declensions and conjugations, and 
the like. 

The contention that all education must be specific 
is ordinarily taken as a repudiation of the doctrine of 
transfer of training. Closer scrutiny, however, tends 
to raise doubts on this point. What it amounts to in 
the end is usually that the faculties are much smaller 
or more circumscribed than was formerly supposed. 
A faculty is none the less a faculty because it is small 
or because it is called a ^'specific ability." Nor do we 
escape the curse of formal discipline by the simple 
expedient of narrowing the range of transfer. A col- 
lege course may give a man a liberal education or it 
may not; a teachers' course may fit a person for teach- 
ing or it may not; a course in grammar may give a 
boy a fair command of his native tongue or it may not. 
Even if the school requirements are met, the net 
result may be failure. In cases of this sort, it will 
be observed, we have direct preparation. The failure 
springs from the inability to apply the training. Even 
the most extreme advocate of specific education would 
expect the pupil to apply what he has learjied to new 



THE TRANSFER OF TRAINING 149 

situations. If a pupil could solve no problems of an 
arithmetical kind or could parse no sentences except 
those which he had studied in the schoolroom, the 
purpose or value of the training would hardly be 
obvious. There must be transfer of some sort to new 
problems within the same field, or training would be 
futile. We do not get rid of the problem of transfer 
by using a hazy term like '^specific ability." And if 
this be granted, we seem to be back where we were, 
except that the faculties are now shown to be much 
less inclusive in range than they were formerly sup- 
posed to be. The only alternative to this is to give 
an interpretation to transfer that does not depend 
upon faculties at all. Unless we do this, we are, after 
all, maintaining the scholastic tradition and laying 
ourselves open to the same sort of errors in educational 
practice. In other words, if we reject the solution that 
is offered by the faculty psychology, we must raise the 
previous question and ask what is meant by transfer 
of training. 

By way of approach to this problem it may be sug- 
gested that experience may modify subsequent con- 
duct in either of two ways: viz., through the forma- 
tion of habits or through the perception of meanings. 
Stated in its most general form, the law of habit means 
that when a stimulus is repeated, the organism tends 
to repeat what it has done before. In the course of 
habit formation, however, random movements tend to 
be eliminated, while those which are adaptive in char- 



150 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

acter are retained and repeated over and over again. 
As a result of this, the activity gravitates more and 
more to the level of reflex activity, in which the ac- 
tivity runs off the reel along a line of connections laid 
down in the nervous system independently of experi- 
ence. For practical purposes th-e only difference be- 
tween reflex and habitual activity is that the former 
is determined by neural connections that are inborn, 
while the latter is determined by connections that are 
acquired as a result of experience. In so far as a 
habit becomes ingrained, it becomes indistinguishable 
from activity of the purely reflex type. 

That habit is of fundamental significance for life is 
a well-known fact. In so far as activities become 
stereotyped, we turn them over to the neural ma- 
chinery, which leaves the attention free for other 
things. Without the element of habit we should ac- 
quire no expertness; and the simplest activities, such 
as dressing, walking, reaching, etc., would absorb all 
our time and energy. Moreover, habit is an impor- 
tant factor in the transfer of training. The tight-rope 
walker utilizes the habit of walking, the carpenter util- 
izes habits in hammering and sawing, the mathema- 
tician relies on habit in the use of the multiplication 
table and other simple combinations of niunbers. 
Habit in itself, however, is the reverse of transfer. 
Its outstanding characteristic is not flexibihty but fixity 
of response. Habit is just an acquired reflex; and re- 
flexes, as in the case of the moth and the candle, seem 



THE TRANSFER OF TRAINING 151 

to have no capacity for change in the direction of bet- 
ter adaptation as the result of previous happenings. 
Yet it is precisely in this power of adaptation, in the 
ability to profit by previous experience, that transfer 
of training consists. In order to make possible such 
adaptation, some other element or factor must super- 
vene, which is able to modify or direct our habitual 
reactions so as to make them agencies for different 
ends. 

This other element is the element of meaning. If the 
moth, as a result of previous happenings, were capable of 
comprehending the meaning of the candle, the tendency 
to fly toward the candle would be suppressed, and adap- 
tive behavior would be secured by means of a differ- 
ent reflex or habitual reaction; viz., that of withdrawal. 
Behavior becomes flexible or adaptive when reflex and 
habitual tendencies become the servants of meanings. 
We avoid a mud puddle, not because we are born with 
a reflex for mud puddles, but because it means wet 
feet; we reach for the apple because it means some- 
thing to eat; we take our umbrella because the sky 
looks like rain. Every normal person has on hand, a 
certain stock of meanings by which to give direction 
to conduct, and the possession of a wide range of mean- 
ings implies a more or less commensurate ability to 
adjust conduct to the nature of the environment. 
In so far as we know the meaning of things, we know 
what to expect of them and what can be done with 
them; in other words, conduct becomes intelligent in 



152 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

proportion to our understanding of the world in which 
we Uve. 

What is a meaning? In general, a meaning is any- 
thing that is suggested, pointed to, or indicated by- 
something else. The noise in the street means street- 
car, the cloud of smoke means a fire, the falling leaves 
mean the approach of winter. But human beings have 
the capacity of detaching the thing thus suggested or 
indicated and treating it independently, apart from the 
specific setting or context. A child on the roof of a 
house suggests falling, but the falling can be disen- 
gaged from its concrete setting and made a subject 
of independent interest, as when we study falling bod- 
ies in order to determine the law of momentum or 
acceleration. In much the same way we detach mean- 
ings when we study school systems, or soil composi- 
tion, or business organization, in a variety of forms, 
the result being that we can talk about these topics 
without necessarily referring to any specific instance. 
When a suggested thing, a meaning, is thus detached 
and provided with a name, it is called a concept. Our 
concepts may have a great wealth of content, so that 
they are applicable to a wide range of cases; in fact, 
the great advantage in detaching meanings in this way 
is that they become more readily available for use in 
a variety of situations. 

This brings us to the subject of transfer. As was 
indicated just now, the reason why meanings make 
conduct so adaptable is that they are transferable; 



THE TRANSFER OF TRAINING 153 

they can be learned in one context and used in an- 
other. This is, indeed, one of the commonest facts of 
Hfe. If a person has once colhded with a tree, we 
may expect him to avoid a brick wall, even if it turns 
out that he has never seen bricks before. He recog- 
nizes the old meaning — hardness or collision — in the 
new context. If he has been swindled with mining 
stock, he is likely to be a little more cautious about 
oil wells or schemes to extract gold from sea water. 
Old meanings are transferred or given a new applica- 
tion. Some persons are clearly more able than others, 
but there is some transfer, some extension in the use of 
meanings, in the case of every individual. There are 
limits even to stupidity. 

It is true that we do not ordinarily regard this sort 
of thing as transfer of training. We have been in- 
clined to take for granted that a person who has made 
a study of the gasoline engine will know better what 
to do if he is called upon to repair an engine, even 
though it be an engine of a model that he has never 
seen before, or if he is asked to design, say, a Liberty 
motor. But unless he can transfer, apply, his previous 
knowledge to the new situation, his previous training 
will not help him, any more than a book on etiquette 
will make him a finished diplomat. Transfer of train- 
ing has commonly meant something quite different. 
We have lived on under the influence of the scholastic 
psychology and have expected to get education by a 
kind of magic. Transfer of training has meant the 



154 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

question whether tinkering with a gasoline engine will 
improve a man's taste in lyric poetry, or whether solv- 
ing problems in square and cube root will make one 
more expert in the field of classic philology. 

The conclusion, then, to which we are led is that 
transfer of training means the extension or application 
of meanings to new problems or new situations. In 
making these applications we utilize previous habits. 
A ball player, for example, has a certain equipment of 
habits, such as walking, running, catching, and throw- 
ing, but these habits must constantly be modified and 
directed to suit the needs of the moment. Sometimes 
the ball must be caught and sometimes not; sometimes 
it must be thrown to one place and sometimes to an- 
other; sometimes he must run and sometimes not. 
What he is to do is not determined by another habit, 
but by a quick ''sizing up" of the situation. Unfor- 
tunately, the word habit is used in various ways, and 
this tends to obscure the relation between habit and 
meaning. We sometimes say that the player throws the 
ball to first base as a matter of habit, in the sense 
that a certain meaning is suggested and acted upon 
without consideration of other possibilities, because 
this type of situation has occurred so frequently before. 
Here habit is not opposed to meaningful behavior, but 
is a name for behavior in which the meaning requires 
a minimum of readjustment or reorganization. In fact, 
habitual activity that involves no meaning seems to 
be distinctly the exception, rather than the rule. 



I 



THE TRANSFER OF TRAINING 155 



Again, the word habit may connote an estabhshed ideal 
or preference, as when we say that a man is in the 
habit of giving liberally to charity, or of spending his 
evenings at the club. Here again the word cannot be 
taken to mean that the activity is not directed by mean- 
ings. All conduct is normally interwoven with habit, 
but the fact remains that meanings furnish the flexibility 
or adaptability which constitutes transfer of training. 
Whether an individual can apply the meanings or 
concepts which he has already acquired, when he is con- 
fronted with a new situation, is, to a considerable ex- 
tent, no doubt, a question of native ability. Newton, 
for example, was able to apply the familiar concept of 
''faUing body" to the motion of the moon, because he 
was able to see the resemblance between this motion 
and the falling of the apple. His previous training 
had furnished him with some information about fall- 
ing bodies and about the components of a circular 
motion, but for the application of this knowledge he 
was left to his own devices. The task of education is 
done when it has furnished the equipment, the raw 
materials, for making the application. Another illus- 
tration may be added, which is furnished by an inci- 
dent that occurred during the Civil War. In the 
early period of the war the leaders of the North were 
much embarrassed by the runaway slaves that flocked 
to the Federal armies. "To return the runaways to 
slavery aroused indignation in the North and even in 
Europe, while to proclaim them free alarmed the bor- 

I 



156 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 



der states and the conservatives of the North. General 
Benjamin F. Butler found the happiest solution of all. 
He declared the negroes who came under his military 
jurisdiction ^contraband of war^ and held them just as 
any contraband article is held or treated in time of 
war." ^ The situation was unique. None of the 
Northern leaders had been educated so as to know 
beforehand just what to do under such circumstances. 
The difficulty was wholly unforeseen. Their training did 
indeed include the concept *' contraband of war/' but 
when the situation arose it depended upon individual 
ingenuity to apply this meaning to the new problem 
and thus secure a satisfactory solution of the difficulty. 
All this is fairly obvious. No amount of training 
can convert dulness into genius, and if the individual 
is too slow-witted or too much upset by the emergency 
to use his resources, this fact can hardly be blamed 
on education. But, unfortunately, the failure to apply 
previous training to the new situation may be due to 
the character of the training. If the concepts are 
mainly verbal, too empty to furnish suggestions, then 
education must assume the responsibility. James's 
story of his struggle with his student lamp is a case in 
point. The lamp would not burn properly, and it was 
only by accident that he discovered the remedy, which 
consisted in propping up the chimney so as to let in 
more air. James had doubtless studied the theory of 
combustion in physics, but in spite of that fact the 

* Morgan, J. — Abraham Lincoln, p. 310. 



THE TRANSFER OF TRAINING 157 

flickering lamp suggested nothing whatever to him. 
The theory was for him just ^^book learning," which 
could not be converted into practice. 

The complaint against ^^book learning" is of course 
familiar. The form in which the complaint is some- 
times made gives one the impression that books are 
regarded as a hindrance to education. What is prop- 
erly meant is that knowledge easily passes muster 
when it is, in fact, mainly verbal; i.e., when the mean- 
ings are not sufficiently developed to permit of ready 
application to new problems. Transferability, then, is 
the test. In so far as training fails to make adequate 
provision for transfer or application it becomes formal 
in an evil sense; and this is just as true of '' specific" 
as of ^'general" education. A professional training 
may be formal in this sense; and when this is the 
case, it appears that the recipient of such training can 
do everything that is required of him, except that he 
cannot apply his training to new problems. The worst 
feature of such training may be that its limitations are 
entirely un suspected . The inability to make application, 
which results when our meanings are lacking in con- 
tent, is often blamed on the stupidity or indifference 
of the pupil, when, as a matter of fact, the chief reason 
is that the teacher himself does not have the ^^ con- 
crete mind." The realization that our comprehension 
of meanings is very limited is not, as a rule, an inborn 
trait, but is acquired as a result of making applications, 
which develops the power of criticism. Unless this 



158 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

trait is developed in the teacher himself, there is little 
likelihood that it will be developed in the pupil. And 
the fact of the matter is that many teachers, even 
when they are specialists, may, on occasion, have only 
a dim idea of what it is that they are talking about. 
The concrete mind is the mind with the disposition 
to test and develop meanings through applications and 
illustrations. This disposition needs cultivation so as 
to make it a settled habit, although the original ten- 
dency in this direction varies considerably in different 
individuals. '^When Clerk Maxwell was a child, it is 
written that he had a mania for having everything 
explained to him, and that when people put him off 
with vague verbal accounts of any phenomenon he 
would interrupt them impatiently by saying, ^Yes, but 
I want you to tell me the particular go of it!^"^ 

How meanings may be developed and transformed 
through application was discussed in the preceding 
chapter. It should be emphasized that the difference 
between ^^ specific" and '^general" education does not 
turn on the presence or absence of transfer. The dif- 
ference is a difference in range of transfer. Concepts 
may be developed so as to be effective within a cer- 
tain area, but the area may be so contracted as to 
make the training narrow and purely technical. When 
subjects are taught in this fashion, we cannot assume 
that perspective or breadth of outlook will be secured 
if only a sufficient number of such subjects are taught. 

^ James, W. — Pragmatism, p. 197. 






THE TRANSFER OF TRAINING 159 



The remedy lies rather in a different method of pre- 
sentation and a proper correlation of subjects, so that 
the particular subject or interest will be seen in its 
larger setting, in its relations to things at large. In 
the biological sciences, the concept of evolution affords 
a tremendous educational opportunity. Moreover, 
scientific method takes on a new meaning and im- 
poses a new obligation when it is seen, not simply as a 
means for securing control over natural forces, but 
as a protection against the intolerance and cruelty of 
bigotry and blind belief. When viewed from this 
standpoint, the scientific ideal or concept of open- 
mindedness and impartiality becomes transferable from 
the laboratory and the classroom to the affairs of daily 
living. Similarly, the engineer who understands his 
subject in its relation to its effect upon human history 
gains a new appreciation of the forces that help to 
shape the destinies of the race, and learns, perhaps, 
to see bridges as symbols of political and social insti- 
tutions and of the rise and fall of empires. Since we 
live in a world where everything is related to every- 
thing else, it seems antecedently likely that the dis- 
tinction between cultural and vocational training is 
not based primarily on anything inherent in the sub- 
ject matter, but rather on a difference in outlook, in 
mode of treatment, or range of application. It is pos- 
sible for the specialist in the classics to be as restricted 
in his attitude as the shopkeeper; the colonel's lady 
and Judy O'Grady, as KipHng suggests, may turn out 



160 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

to be very much alike. Given a wide range of appli- 
cation our meanings become indefinitely transferable, 
until, like a woman's hairpin, they can be used for 
almost any purpose. How knowledge may become 
interrelated so that our concepts of the most common- 
place objects may lead out to the remotest corners of 
space and time and to the great problems of human 
history and destiny is illustrated by Huxley's lecture, 
^'On a Piece of Chalk,'' which exemplifies in some de- 
tail the linkage of fact darkly sjonbolized to the poet 
by the flower in the crannied wall. In Huxley's opin- 
ion, ^^the man who should know the true history of 
the bit of chalk which every carpenter carries in his 
breeches pocket, though ignorant of all other history, 
is likely, if he will think his knowledge out to its ulti- 
mate results, to have a truer, and therefore a better, 
conception of this wonderful universe, and of man's 
relation to it, than the most learned student who is 
deep-read in the records of humanity and ignorant of 
those of nature." ^ 

By some persons this emphasis upon concepts will 
perhaps be taken as the expression of an overdevel- 
oped intellectualism, which chooses to neglect the emo- 
tional and esthetic side of our nature. Such an inter- 
pretation, however, rests on a misunderstanding of the 
place or function of meanings in experience. As was 

* Huxley, T, — Discourses, Biological and Geological, p. 4. (For an 
application of this general standpoint to the teaching of geography, 
history, and science, see Dewey, J. — Democracy and Education, chs. 16 
and 17.) 



THE TRANSFER OF TRAINING 161 

sa»J before, meanings are only tools or agencies for 
realizing or facilitating adjustment. The foregoing 
discussion is entirely compatible with the view that 
the purpose of education consists in cultivating cer- 
tain attitudes or appreciations. The study of history 
or science, for example, must result in the develop- 
ment of a historic or scientific '^ sense" or attitude; 
otherwise our knowledge remains purely formal 
and ornamental. Unless we acquire a certain ^^feel'^ 
or sense of values, we remain on the outside of the 
subject. The subjects in the curriculum are many- 
sided, and to awaken an all-round appreciation of 
them is a vital necessity. '^Certainly one of the most 
unfortunate results of the 'finished^ form in which 
both mathematical and scientific truths are presented 
lies in the very fact that the methods through which 
these results have been gained are seldom or never 
made conscious to the student. The narrowly utilitarian 
values may be sufficiently realized by their mastery; as 
far as the direct application of facts and principles is 
concerned, the direct presentation of the facts and 
principles may suffice. But the unique values of these 
subjects are of a different order, and require a different 
procedure if they are adequately to be realized.'^ ^ 

Meanings, then, are the instrumentalities for secur- 
ing educational values. It is through meanings that 
our natural reactions or appreciations are directed 
toward new ends or are given new character. Our 

1 Bagley, W. C. — Educational Values, p. 202. 



162 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

spontaneous love of home, for example, grows natu- 
rally into intelligent patriotism as we gain an insight 
into the character or meaning of our national ideals. 
The function of meanings is not to supplant direct 
appreciation, but to enrich and transform it. This 
transforming mfluence is indicated by Wordsworth 
when he says that he had learned 

To look on nature, not as in the hour 

Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes 

The still, sad music of humanity. 

It is true, no doubt, that the contagion of enthu- 
siasm and example is a vital element in education. 
This contagion, however, is not blind imitation, but 
rests on the perception of meanings; and '^getting 
into the subject" is a process of modifying or chang- 
ing qualitatively the character of the original reaction 
through insight. Meanings work both transformation 
and transferability, and they are the instruments upon 
which education must rely to realize its ends. 

REFERENCES 

Bagley, W. C. — The Educative Process, ch. 13. 

— Educational Values, ch. 12. 
CoLViN, S. S. — The Learning Process, chs. 14, 15, 16. 
Heck, W. H. — Mental Discipline and Educational Values, 
James, W. — Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, ch. 16. 
JuDD, C. H. — Psychology of High School Subjects, ch. 17. 
RuEDiGER, W. C. — Principles of Education, ch. 6. 
Thorndike, E. L. — Educational Psychology (Briefer Course), ch. 18. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE SOUL-SUBSTANCE THEORY 

It has become apparent in the foregoing discussion 
that a theory of education is at bottom a theory re- 
garding the nature of man and his place in the uni- 
verse. The question of aims in education is inextri- 
cably bound up with questions such as evolution, 
democracy, and the nature of ideals and of duty; while 
the problem of method is determined largely by our 
conception of the nature of interest and of intelligence. 
It is not surprising, therefore, that our theory of edu- 
cation should be just an expression of our philosophy 
of life. Our view of man's nature will inevitably direct 
our choice of the methods that are suitable for his 
training and our selection of the ends that are most 
worth while. 

What sort of being, then, is man? It is stated in 
Holy Writ that he was created a ^'living soul." That 
we are different in kind from the sticks and stones of 
our environment is a universal conviction. Inanimate 
objects are the slaves of circumstance, but man can 
choose his goal and bend circumstances to his will. 
He can foresee the future and shape his present con- 
duct with reference to what is yet to come. To him, 
accordingly, it is given to have dominion over the 

163 



I 



164 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

earth and to be master of his own destiny. Man is, 
in short, an intelligence, and hence he exercises the 
prerogatives of intelligence. 

That intelligence is a tremendous factor in the world 
is too obvious to require discussion. The maxim 
that knowledge is power is, in a sense, simply an 
epitome of the whole course of civilization. Although 
physically less well equipped than most other living 
beings to succeed in the struggle for existence, man 
has been able, by dint of his intelligence, to control 
the forces of nature so as to secure possession of the 
earth and to establish himself in a position of unchal- 
lenged supremacy. As Voltaire remarks, this little 
being, five feet tall, apparently undertakes to consti- 
tute himself an exception to the laws of the universe. 
As against the universal laws of causation, he claims 
freedom of the will; instead of being simply a product 
and plaything of the forces of nature, he foresees the 
outcome of their operations and makes them the serv- 
ants of his desires. Man has sometimes been called 
an enigma and a paradox, a product of nature and 
yet the master of nature. This unique status is the 
achievement of intelligence. But how does intelli- 
gence operate; in the phrase of Clerk Maxwell, what 
is the "particular go'^ of it? What does it mean to 
be a "living soul"? 

As long as men are absorbed in the task of securing 
control over their environment, this question is not 
hkely to become urgent. The important thing is the 



THE SOUL-SUBSTANCE THEORY 165 

result and not the process by which it is achieved. 
In the course of time, however, reflection became in- 
evitable, one important reason being that reflection 
was necessary for educational practice. With the cul- 
tivation of reflection it appeared that intelligence usu- 
ally found it easier to understand the things in its 
environment than to understand itself. It is the eye 
through which all things are perceived, but, like the 
eye, it has seemed unable to look at itself. The ac- 
counts that intelligence has given of itself are for the 
most part halting and full of contradiction; and this 
state of affairs naturally operated to the detriment of 
educational theory. One of the most influential of 
these earlier theories is known as the soul-substance 
theory. It is the doctrine that the soul is a '^ sub- 
stance," an entity or thing, in much the same sense 
that physical objects are things. This theory has had 
a long career and has had much to do with the shaping 
of educational practice and with the selection of edu- 
cational ends. 

The nature of this doctrine may be presented most 
conveniently in connection with the theory of the 
philosopher Descartes, whose speculations on this sub- 
ject have had an influence that extends down to the 
present day in determining popular thought. Ac- 
cording to Descartes, whose name is associated with 
the beginnings of modern philosophy, the human soul 
is a substance or entity that has its seat in the brain, 
and more specifically in the pineal gland. The brain 



166 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

being composed of two hemispheres which are bilat- 
erally symmetrical to each other, nearly all its parts 
or constituents are arranged in pairs, one member of 
the pair being found on each of the hemispheres. 
Near the center of the brain, however, is found the 
pineal gland, which is an exception to the general rule. 
From the fact that it has no duplicate and that it is 
somewhat centrally located, Descartes inferred that it 
is probably the habitation of the intelUgent power 
which gives direction to conscious behavior. The liv- 
ing body, in his view, is an elaborate and cleverly con- 
trived mechanism, and the function of the brain is to 
connect the impulses coming in from the peripheral 
sense organs with the nerves that control the muscles. 
The brain, to use a modern figure of speech, is the 
central switchboard in a complicated telephone sys- 
tem. To a certain extent this switchboard is operated 
on the principle of the automatic telephone. The in- 
coming currents work their way out in the form of 
motor discharges, without the help of a supervising in- 
telligence. In some cases, however, appropriate re- 
sponse is possible only if the incoming excitation first 
calls up "central'^ stationed at the pineal gland, in 
order to get the right connections. The soul then sees 
to it that purposive activity occurs by deflecting the 
currents in such a way that the sensory stimulus 
is followed by the correct motor response. 

It was suggested just now that this view still repre- 
sents with reasonable accuracy the popular notion of 



THE SOUL-SUBSTANCE THEORY 167 

the soul. Such words as soul, mind, consciousness, 
are commonly associated with an entity or spiritual 
substance that is located somewhere in the head. By 
means of this hypothesis the explanation of intelli- 
gent behavior becomes fairly simple, or at least ap- 
parently so. The stimulations or currents coming in 
to the brain from the sense organs are like so many 
knocks on a door to arouse the sleeper within. The 
soul thereupon takes cognizance of the situation and 
decides what is to be done, and in conformity with 
this decision it switches the cerebral energy into the 
neural centers that control the muscles for the appro- 
priate response. 

In this system of Descartes the new feature was the 
explanation of the manner in which the soul was sup- 
posed to guide the body. Descartes drew a sharper 
line between mechanical and purposive behavior than 
had been done previously, and so he was compelled 
to show just how and where the soul interferes with 
the processes going on within the organism. But the 
belief in a soul was already old at the lime of Descartes. 
It had become the basis of an important psychological 
and educational doctrine. While the soul is a unitary 
activity, it operates in a variety of ways, such as re- 
membering, attending, imagining, reasoning, and will- 
ing. These different activities represent the various 
capacities or faculties of the soul, and so the psychology 
that is based on this belief has come to be known as 
the faculty psychology. We are able to remember, so it 



168 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

assumes, because the soul has a faculty of memory, 
and to understand because the soul has a faculty of 
understanding. The educational corollary of this 
doctrine is the belief that if a faculty is trained in 
one direction, or with one set of material, it will be 
improved in all directions. The subject matter is rela- 
tively unimportant; the activity has pretty much the 
same form regardless of the material upon which it is 
employed. This doctrine has become known in mod- 
ern parlance as the doctrine of formal discipline. 

That this doctrine is peculiarly fitted to satisfy the 
imagination can scarcely be denied. The nicely 
adapted movements of a sailing vessel tacking into 
port, or of an automobile winding its way through a 
crowded thoroughfare are amply explained when we 
discover the function of the pilot at the helm or of 
the driver at the wheel. The explanation is sufficient 
in such cases, because we are concerned to account 
for the behavior of the vessel or automobile, and 
not for the behavior of the pilot or driver. But 
if it is the driver rather than the automobile that 
requires explanation, we have not progressed very far. 
How, in detail, does intelligence operate, how does 
it form conclusions and volitions? If we say that in- 
coming currents arouse a certain spiritual substance 
to such activity as attention, deliberation, and voli- 
tion, as a result of which the activities of the body 
are turned in a given direction, we have not shed any 
particular light on the nature of intelligence; we have 



THE SOUL-SUBSTANCE THEORY 169 

simply transferred intelligence to the driver, that is, 
the soul. Instead of analyzing the various steps and 
conditions that are involved in the procedure of intel- 
ligence, we have merely assigned to it a local habita- 
tion and a name. ^' ^Herr Pastor, sure there be a horse 
inside,' called out the peasants to X after their spiritual 
shepherd had spent hours in explaining to them the 
construction of the locomotive. With a horse inside 
truly everything becomes clear, even though it be a 
queer enough sort of horse — the horse itself calls for 
no explanation! '' * 

Now the horse itself is the very thing that calls for 
explanation; and the moment we venture to explain 
we are beset with trouble. We soon find that it is, 
indeed, a ''queer enough sort of horse." If the soul 
is a spiritual, nonspacial substance, it is not located 
anywhere in space, and how then can it have its seat 
in the brain? If it be said that the soul has its seat 
in the brain merely in the sense that the brain is the 
place where it operates, we must solve the puzzle how 
a thing can act on something else, without being at 
that place or at any place at all. But waiving the 
question how an immaterial substance can stimulate 
a nerve center, the doctrine appears to violate the 
principle of the conservation of energy; and we have, 
besides, the further difficulty that the soul is supposed 
to have an intimate knowledge of cerebral anatomy 
in order to know which nerve center is to be stimu- 

* James, W. — Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, p. 29. 



170 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

lated. It is pretty generally agreed among psycholo- 
gists that we have no direct experience of the soul, as 
we have of colors, sounds, and pains. That is, the 
soul is an inference, and the justification for this infer- 
ence is that it is supposed to explain intelligent be- 
havior. Unless, therefore, this hypothetical soul makes 
it possible for us to have a clearer understanding of 
intelligent guidance than we have without it, there is 
no reason why we should entrust it with the high office 
of directing the activities of the body. It must either 
explain or else resign in favor of a more worthy successor. 
But this is not the whole story. With the develop- 
ment of knowledge has come the conviction that cer- 
tain fundamental claims made for the soul are without 
substantial foundation. According to the soul-sub- 
stance theory, the function of the incoming currents is 
primarily to arouse the soul to activity. Reflection, 
deliberation, choice, and other mental operations are 
supposed to go on within the soul, more or less inde- 
pendently of the body. The eye and the ear reveal 
what is going on outside, but all decisions must be left 
to the soul. It seems undeniable, however, that con- 
scious processes of all kinds are much more intimately 
dependent upon bodily processes. Everyday experi- 
ences bear witness to this fact, in a great variety of 
ways. A good dinner may put us in so amiable a 
frame of mind that we are willing to give our consent 
to a proposal which at another time we should decline 
to entertain. Similarly, drugs or strong drink may 



THE SOUL-SUBSTANCE THEORY 171 

lead a person to say and do things that under other 
circumstances he would consider quite beneath him. 
Bad weather may make us gloomy and irritable, ex- 
haustion or lack of food interferes with clear thinking, 
the physical deterioration of old age brings with it 
an impairment of mental powers, and loss of blood 
or a blow on the head may cause a cessation of con- 
sciousness altogether. Mental development bears a 
certain correspondence to brain development, and an 
injury to the brain may result in a considerable change 
in mental and moral traits. Facts of this kind give 
strong support to the conclusion that the assumed in- 
dependence of the soul is fictitious, that mental pro- 
cesses are conditioned, not by the soul, but by the 
brain. 

This relation of dependence, or of correlation, be- 
tween mental facts and cerebral processes has been 
worked out in considerable detail in the study of what 
is commonly known as the localization of function. 
The surface of the brain has been mapped out and 
to a certain extent different areas have been set aside 
as the seat of specific mental functions. Thus one 
area has been found to be the seat of vision, another 
is the seat of audition, a third is assigned to smell, a 
fourth is labeled motor area, etc. While much of the 
brain is still unaccounted for in this scheme, and while 
the quality of the evidence varies, the general prin- 
ciple is widely accepted. It is no longer considered 
necessary in most quarters to make mental function 



ft 



172 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

dependent upon an agent, called the soul, behind the 
scenes; dependence on the brain seems to meet all the 
requirements. Materialism has managed to extract 
much comfort from this conclusion. According to 
materialism, the upshot of the whole matter is ex- 
pressed in the celebrated remark that 'Hhe brain se- 
cretes thoughts as the liver secretes bile." Thoughts 
are regarded as the shadows, so to speak, of the brain- 
processes which they attend. 

However that may be, these results have delivered 
a deathblow to the old faculty psychology. The vari- 
ous processes which were formerly supposed to be the 
operations of a single faculty are now known to be com- 
binations or organizations of diverse operations. The 
visual center, for example, cooperates with other 
centers in certain cases of remembering, with different 
centers in imagining, and with still other centers in 
reading and speaking. Not only so, but each of the 
different " faculties '* likewise represents a heterogene- 
ous mass of activities. Visual memory and auditory 
memory involve distinct cerebral processes, and within 
visual memory we are obliged to make such distinctions 
as memory for color and memory for outline or form. 
A person's memory may be ''good'' in any one of these 
directions and less good in others. And the same is 
true if we consider such processes as reasoning, will- 
ing, speaking, and writing. In short, each ''faculty" 
proves to be a collective name for a great variety of 
processes more or less diverse. These facts, together 



I 



THE SOUL-SUBSTANCE THEORY 173 

with the mass of evidence on transfer of training, 
have led to the rejection of the theory and have made 
necessary a reconsideration of educational standards 
and aims. 

It appears, then, that the attempt to explain the 
phenomena of our conscious existence by means of an 
entity or substance called a soul has turned out to 
be a failure. In the first place, this theory gives no 
insight into the operations of intelligence. It merely 
converts intelligence into a kind of thing, calls it the 
soul, and then offers this result as the explanation of 
conscious behavior. And, secondly, the whole drift of 
physiological and psychological knowledge goes to show 
that the soul or intelligence is not related to the body 
in the detached way that the driver is related to the 
automobile, but that the relation is of a much more 
intimate character. In other words, the conception of 
the soul as a distinct entity or thing must be given up 
as inadequate to the requirements of explanation. 

It is interesting to observe that the doctrine of 
'^faculties" was really killed by homeopathic treat- 
ment. The faculties kept growing smaller and smaller, 
until finally there was a distinct faculty for each expe- 
rience, and this faculty was finally identified with a 
certain portion or function of the nervous system. 
At first there was just the unitary soul-substance, which 
was the bearer of all mental functions. Then ^4n the 
course of time this soul became the parent of numer- 
ous little souls, the faculties, each of which performed 



174 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

functions essentially like those of its ancestor, though 
on a less extended scale. The faculty of perception, for 
example, served primarily as a carrier or medium for 
the facts of perception only; and a similar limitation 
was placed upon each of the other faculties. While 
this multiplication of entities called for no restatement 
of the problem of transfer, it introduced a significant 
complication. It suggested that each of the faculties 
must be trained separately. While it was still pos- 
sible to believe that the training of observation in a 
given field would improve observation in all fields, it 
was not self-evident that training in observation would 
improve the faculties of reasoning and memory; and 
this fact suggests that the germ of the doctrine of 
specialized functions, and of " specific '^ as opposed to 
^^general'^ education is embedded in the very core of the 
faculty psychology. 

^'This implication of the faculty psychology came 
to the surface in connection with the speculations on 
phrenology and the localization of function. When the 
process of localizing was once well started, there was 
no way of stopping it. In so far as any fact of expe- 
rience possessed a distinctive trait, it could claim sep- 
arate localization and the status of a 'faculty,' and 
so it became necessary to keep trinmiing down the 
faculties so as to make them conform to the facts of 
neurology. In the end this process led inevitably to 
the rejection of the belief in 'general' education. There 
was no longer any appreciable transfer because the 



THE SOUL-SUBSTANCE THEORY 175 

span of the faculties became so exceedingly narrow. 
This conclusion, it will be observed, adopts the prem- 
ises of its rival. While the localization of function 
has been supposed to justify the most uncompromis- 
ing opposition to the faculty psychology, it offers, in 
fact, a physiological basis or warrant for an astound- 
ing multiplication of the faculties. The hands are 
Esau's hands, but the voice is the voice of Jacob. ' ' 
^'The eventual result of this development, however, 
was the abandonment of the faculty psychology. The 
development was, in fact, just a diplomatic way of 
inducing the faculty psychology to commit suicide. 
When the faculties were no longer available as carriers 
or media for transmitting and applying previous train- 
ing to new situations, their raison d^etre had disap- 
peared, and their place was taken by the neural pro- 
cesses which, at the outset, had served only in the 
capacity of humble concomitants. But the inexor- 
able logic of the situation, in fact, threatens l5o carry 
us far beyond this point. If it is true, as James main- 
tains, that no experience and no brain state ever recurs 
in its original form, education would seem to be a 
hopeless undertaking. To have had certain experi- 
ences, educational or otherwise, is altogether devoid of 
practical significance, if experience consists of a series 
of unrelated and nonrecurrent events. Unless the oc- 
currences of yesterday abide in some fashion, they 
might as well never have happened at all. The fact, 
however, that the past does persist into the present 



i 



176 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

in some fashion and that education has a legitimate 
and necessary place in the scheme of things is not open 
to question, and so a new approach to the problem of 
transfer is demanded/' ^ 

It was pointed out, a while ago, that our view of 
man's nature, of intelligence, mind, or soul, has a 
bearing, not only on the methods of teaching, but on 
the ends that are set up as the controlling aims of 
education. With regard to method, the effect of the 
soul-substance theory has been to give warrant and 
authority to the doctrine of formal discipline. On the 
side of aims it has supported undemocratic ideals, such as 
the Aristotelian doctrine of culture, which was based 
on a conception of society as organized into superior 
and inferior classes. In this scheme the inferior class, 
the slaves, were mere tools; their function consisted in 
making it possible for the superior class to cultivate 
the refinements of life, to make life something attrac- 
tive and worth while. This contrast led to a sharp 
opposition between training for production or efficiency 
and training for knowledge and appreciation, com- 
pletely dissociated from the practical affairs of life. 
The first was practical and technical, the second was 
liberal and cultural. Education thus became a sym- 
bol of social status. The arts and crafts, the things 
that had to do with production, were reserved for the 

*The above quotation is from an article by the writer, entitled 
"What is Transfer of Training?" in School and Society, Vol. IX, pp. 39, 
40. 



THE SOUL-SUBSTANCE THEORY 177 

lower classes; to those of higher status all such things 
were degrading, and for them education became a 
badge of social distinction. This conception main- 
tained itself, with some modification, throughout the 
succeeding centuries. In terms of the soul-substance 
theory it meant that in the system of training the soul 
was regarded either as a means or as an end. Knowl- 
edge and skill had value either for their bearing on 
practical affairs or on their own account, as enrich- 
ments or adornments of the soul. That they could 
not be both at the same time was apparently taken 
for granted. 

The reason why this distinction between the two 
forms of training was maintained so tenaciously is to 
be sought both in the nature of the social organization 
and in the nature of the soul-substance theory. If we 
regard the soul as something more or less detached 
and independent, it follows that the way to cultivate 
the soul is to ascertain what sort of a thing it is and 
to proceed accordingly. Aristotle's conception of the 
soul was indeed different from that of the soul-sub- 
stance theory, yet he likewise held to a certain de- 
tachment, and he was, therefore, entirely consistent in 
the doctrine that, since the distinctive trait of the soul 
is intelligence or thought, the highest or best life is a 
life devoted to speculation, to the cultivation of the 
intellect. But the whole matter stands on a different 
footing if we give a different interpretation to the 
term "soul.'' The point at issue, it will be observed, 



178 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

is not whether man has a soul, but what is meant by 
soul. If we start with the evolutionary clue that man 
comes into the world with an endowment of impulses 
and tendencies which can find proper scope for expres- 
sion only through a sharing in the meanings and pur- 
poses of others, there is an unmistakable shift of em- 
phasis. Instead of detachment we have participation; 
the self finds its fulfilment, not in the cultivation of 
isolated pursuits and appreciations, but in the identi- 
fication of the self with ends that are appreciated in 
their social significance, thus verifying the Scriptural 
saying that he who would save his life must learn to 
lose it. 

It is needless to argue that the distinction 
which has been made between practical and 
cultural education is essentially undemocratic in 
character. Practical education, as thus conceived, 
is education without background, without perspective, 
and is identical with narrow vocationalism. Because 
the training is narrow, there is little opportunity 
for readjustment to changing conditions, and little 
opportunity to share in the life of one's own time 
and generation. A person thus trained is robbed of his 
spiritual birthright, and is obliged to let others do his 
thinking for him. Moreover, in these days when class 
consciousness and national consciousness are gaining 
new incentives, there is serious danger that futiu-e i 
adjustments will be made on the basis of strength 
rather than of understanding and cooperation. It should 



I 



THE SOUL-SUBSTANCE THEORY 179 

be borne in mind also that the injury which is done 
to the more fortunate or more privileged members of 
society who secure what is called a liberal education 
is equally real, though perhaps less obvious. They, 
too, fail to see the human issues in the affairs of life, 
and in the cultivation of certain appreciations which 
are conventionally regarded as cultural either lose 
sight of moral issues or develop a callous disregard of 
them. This kind of education has the same tendency 
in the direction of class education as its opposite, the 
ultrapractical education. Within the limits of his 
class the individual may exhibit a generous, humane 
spirit, while outside of these limits there may be neither 
generosity nor any genuine desire for understanding. 
Such education, whether cultural or technical, does not 
truly liberate ; it does not make provision for progress. 
It is not practical, for it does not facilitate the intelli- 
gent adjustment of difficulties. It is not cultural, for 
it develops a sort of astigmatism, which obscures the 
human meaning of things; for, as Dewey has said, 
^Hhere is perhaps no better definition of culture than 
that it is the capacity for constantly expanding in 
range and accuracy one's perception of meanings. '^ ^ 

While it is true that the soul-substance theory has 
maintained amiable relations with both the doctrine 
of formal discipline and with the traditional concep- 
tion of culture, it may be noted that these two views 
do not agree very well with each other. It would 

* Dewey, J. — Democracy and Education, p. 145. 



180 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

hardly be consistent to maintain both that one kind 
of subject matter is as good as another, provided that 
the different faculties come into play, and also that 
one kind of subject matter is peculiarly suited to the 
leisure class and another to the working class. Yet 
both find a welcome within the hospitable limits of the 
soul-substance theory. Perhaps this is the reason why 
the culture theory found it so easy, when its claims 
were seriously challenged, to shift its position and to 
argue that its educational materials were of peculiar 
value from the standpoint of formal discipline. At the 
present time neither formal discipline nor culture, in 
the traditional sense, enjoys its old-time prestige. 
There is reason for the view that the former belief in 
transfer of training involved a kind of magic; and 
there is also reason for the view that the scorn of 
application and of the things that have to do with pro- 
duction is evidence of moral defect. To some extent, 
this change of sentiment was made inevitable by the 
change in conditions. The demands upon education 
are too detailed and too specific to leave much ground 
for the notion that the selection of subject matter is 
of minor importance. And the development of com- 
merce and industry has been so tremendous that a 
patronizing attitude towards them is simply silly. It is 
true, no doubt, that profit-grabbing and exploitation 
do not become admirable when they are conducted on 
a large scale. But the failure to see that business 
need not mean just a low desire for gain, but that it 



I THE SOUL-SUBSTANCE THEORY 181 

affords opportunity for large development of person- 
ality, means that we are still in bondage to tradition. 
Educational practice has more than once been forced 
to change its tactics by the mounting pressure of 
events, but progress in education that comes in this 
form is progress that is secured by following after, f 
and not by leading the way. If education is to do its ! 
whole duty, it must continue to reflect, in the light 
of all available knowledge, upon the meaning of mind ^ 
or intelligence, in order to fiind the clues to the mean- 
ing of education and to the selection of methods that 
are appropriate to its aims. 

REFERENCES 

BowNE, B. p. — Metaphysics, Part III, ch. 1. 

Descartes, Rene. — Tract on Man. 

FuLLERTON, G. S. — Introduction to Philosophy, ch. 9. 

— System of Metaphysics, ch. 17. 
James, W. — Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, p. 342. 
Locke, J. — Essay on the Human Understanding, Book II, ch. 23. 
MacDougall, W. — Body and Mind, chs. 2, 5. 
Paulsen, F. — Introduction to Philosophy, ch. 1 (latter part). 
Sabin, E. E. — "Giving up the Ghost"; Journal of Philosophy, 
Vol. XVII, p. 701. 



CHAPTER X 

THE DOCTRINE OF MENTAL STATES 

It is generally conceded that the attempt to explain 
individual experience by the hypothesis of an under- 
lying substance has ended in failure. The difficulties 
inherent in this theory may be summarized by saying 
that the theory is both useless and unintelligible for 
purposes of explanation, and that it attributes to the 
soul-substance an independence which is not borne 
out by the facts. The revision which naturally sug- 
gested itself in order to make the theory acceptable 
took the form of substituting the brain for the soul as 
the underlying reality, and of making the mental life 
consist of an aggregate or " stream '* of "mental states." 
The mental was asserted to be made up of a succes- 
sion of experiences, such as seeing, hearing, and touch- 
ing, together with images, memories, and the like. 
These are not '^ attached" to anything, but are some- 
how dependent upon the brain, which furnishes all 
the support that is needed. 

This expedient has been widely adopted. Modern 

psychology has become a '^ psychology without a soul." 

The body is no longer subservient to a single master 

spirit, the soul, but rather, if subservient at all, to an 

endless succession of rulers, each of which enjoys a 

. 182 



THE DOCTRINE OF MENTAL STATES 183 

brief moment of authority and then passes away. 
Until death intervenes, the body, so it would seem, 
constantly brings into being the mental states by which 
it is directed and controlled. 

This change in standpoint evidently offers certain 
advantages for the study of intelligence. Instead of 
being confronted by an inscrutable soul, which jeal- 
ously guards the secret of the manner in which intelli- 
gence operates and the conditions involved in this 
operation, the investigator finds that all the impor- 
tant facts in the case are directly accessible to him. 
He is no longer obliged to take into account an agency 
screened from view behind the flux of mental states, 
but can confine himself to the experiences of which 
he has immediate knowledge, plus the operations of 
the brain, which can be studied by the methods of 
natural science. He has now the immense advantage 
that all the cards are in plain sight on the table. 

As a result of this simplification, the incalculable 
element resulting from the decisions and volitions of 
an independent soul-substance is eUminated. More- 
over, the investigator is fully protected against the in- 
trusion of any element of spontaneity or choice. We 
ordinarily think of a conscious being as a being that 
has purposes or ends, and that devises ways and means 
for the realization of these ends. The reduction, how- 
ever, of experience to mental states means that the 
behavior of a conscious being can be explained fully in 
causal terms, without reference to purposes or ends. 



184 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

If the brain produces consciousness, this fact is just 
an instance of causation, pure and simple; and if the 
consciousness thus produced can in turn exert an in- 
fluence upon the processes going on in the brain, this 
again is a case of causation and nothing more. The 
mental states produced by the brain possess no such 
independence as was attributed to the soul-substance> 
and hence spontaneity or purpose seems to have no 
standing ground. On this showing ' there is, in prin- 
ciple, no difference between intelligent behavior and 
the operations of a steam engine. Intelligent behavior 
does not differ in kind from any other behavior. 

The rigidity of the causal connection appears more 
clearly when we examine it in detail. In the first 
place, the occurrence of a mental state is determined 
by the occurrence of a brain state, and the character 
of the mental state is entirely dependent upon the 
character of the brain state. After the mental state 
has come into being, it cannot form decisions or voli- 
tions independently of the brain, for if it could, these 
further changes would have no sufficient cause to ex- 
plain them. Nor does the mental state have a choice 
as to the response which is to occur as a result of its 
presence. If we ask. How does the mental state 
know which brain area is to be stimulated in order to 
secure a given response? the answer is, of course, 
that it does not know. The response follows, not be- 
cause the mental state has picked out a certain cere- 
bral area for stimulation, but as the result of the mere 



THE DOCTRINE OF MENTAL STATES 185 

presence or ''w,eight^' or ''impact'^ of the mental state. 
How this, causal series is to be modified so as to make 
intelligent behavior different in kind from other forms 
of behavior it is not easy to see. 

It is to be expected that this shift in standpoint 
from the soul-substance theory to the doctrine of 
;nental states would find expression in corresponding 
changes in educational theory and practice. The 
change meant, first of all, the abandonment of the 
faculties and of the reliance on formal discipline. 
Moreover, since there was no longer a soul-substance 
in the background, the predominant concern of edu- 
cation was naturally with the mental states or im- 
pressions that were called forth. The new position 
favored a change from verbal symbols to things, to ob- 
ject lessons, nature study, and laboratory manipula- 
tion. With the departure of the soul-substance, there 
also came in a new notion of thinking. From the new 
standpoint it was no longer possible to regard think- 
ing as an independent activity which made use of im- 
pressions as so much raw material; but thinking was 
necessarily conceived as something that had its origin 
in impressions, or as identifiable with a certain arrang- 
ing or grouping of impressions. 

In some respects, this change doubtless marked an 
advance. It meant that learning had become less ab- 
stract, that more attention was paid to the things which 
make up our environment. But the change did not 
prove to be an unmixed blessing. The emphasis upon 



186 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

impressions led to a curious faith in the educative value 
of impressions quite apart from the use that was made 
of them. A peculiar virtue was supposed to reside in 
the handling of objects, in connection with the rela- 
tions of numbers, even when the objects were just an 
incumbrance; and in much the same way consider- 
able importance was attached to experiment without 
regard to its value for training in thinking or in the 
development of method. A teacher of domestic sci- 
ence comments on this as follows: '^Teachers were 
exhorted, implored, commanded not to tell the child 
anything he could be made to find out for himself. In- 
stead of telling our classes that it takes half an hour 
to boil a potato of average size, we thought we had 
painfully to make our unhappy pupils boil potato after 
potato of different sizes, estimate which was the 
potato of average size, and then estimate the average 
time of cooking. It would be as reasonable to decree 
that no child should have money spent for him that 
he did not earn himself; but, unfortunately, child 
labor laws, to regulate toilsome work without need, 
did not apply in the schoolroom, neither did in- 
heritance laws, compelling the transmission of the 
knowledge-wealth of the fathers to the children. Hence 
we could insist on the girl in the domestic science class 
finding out for herself how long she should boil a potato, 
when we could have told her in four seconds by the 
clock.'' 
The fundamental defect of the position under dis- 



THE DOCTRINE OF MENTAL STATES 187 

cussion is that it obscures the nature of thinking. It 
was assumed that impressions were passively received 
and that, after this had gone on for a time, thinking 
then somehow supervened, for the purpose of arrang- 
ing and relating this material. Just how it operated 
was not made very clear. In general, however, it was 
held that induction consisted in gathering a multitude 
of these particulars and then evolving a general law 
or principle that was applicable to all of the particulars. 
Deduction, on the other hand, consisted in applying 
general principles to particular cases. What is over- 
looked in this account is the ^'spontaneity^' of experi- 
ence. Even casual observation is not a passive ab- 
sorbing of external impressions; it means a process of 
attending, of reacting to the environment so as to bring 
about an adjustment. ''The very word perception in- 
dicates that it is fundamentally not a receiving but a 
taking, an outreaching, a seizing. Why was it that the 
Greeks did not discover the world of physical forces, 
gravitation, steam, electricity, radium, and the gas- 
engine? Their world was like ours, these forces were 
working all about them. Their senses were as keen 
as ours. Their curiosity was as great, and as for their 
talent, Mr. Galton has declared that 'the average 
ability of the Athenian race was on the lowest possible 
estimate, very nearly two grades higher than our own 
[the English], that is, about as much as our race is 
above the African negro.' If the forces were there and 
the keenness of intelligence to discern them was there, 



188 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

why were they not found out? The answer must be 
that the discovery of facts is not due to their presence 
nor to the possession of a mind capable of grasping 
them, but rather to the using of mind in the direction 
in which facts Ue. The Greeks were not looking for 
the forces of physical nature — that is why they did not 
see them. Inventions and discoveries are remarkably 
simple after they have been made, but it is only the 
person who is hunting for something of that sort who 
makes them.'^ ^ 

When we turn to thinking, this element of quest, 
of ^'hunting for something,'^ becomes unmistakable. 
Until we have a problem — which represents the need 
of adjustment — we have not even begun to think. 
The whole process works around the problem as its 
pivot. The suggested solution gives unity to the ac- 
tivity, in which observation, induction, and deduction 
become inextricably interwoven; and if we base our 
educational theory on the assumption that experience 
starts with impressions passively received, we are 
bound to go wrong. 

For educational practice the error arising from this 
assumption is twofold. In the first place, as was said 
a moment ago, it encourages the tendency to overes- 
timate the value of sensory experiences that serve no 
particular purpose in the development of thinking ; and, 
secondly, it makes for mechanical treatment of the think- 
ing process. The Herbartian formal steps, when fol- 
» Moore, E.G. — What is Education? p. 178. 



THE DOCTRINE OF MENTAL STATES 189 

lowed closely, furnish an illustration of what is meant.^ 
The Herbartian scheme is formulated on the basis of 
passively received impressions, which are to be ar- 
ranged by the teacher in various orders or formations, 
hke pawns on a chessboard. This accounts for the 
curious insensitiveness to the fact that the problem is 
the outstanding feature of the thinking process and 
that the steps overlap and crisscross and repeat them- 
selves in the progress to the goal. When we are deal- 
ing, not with passive impressions, but with an intelli- 
gence engaged in the process of finding and testing 
suggestions, the formal steps, taken as a fixed plan of 
campaign, are precisely the thing to be avoided. 

As tested by application to educational problems, 
then, the doctrine of mental states is not deserving 
of our complete confidence. There is ground for the 
suspicion that mental states are not facts at all, but 
abstractions, from which the breath of life has fled. 
This suspicion finds considerable support within the 
field of psychological theory itself. If it is true that 
the mental state, like the soul-substance, is just a con- 
venient fiction, we may expect that it will make trouble 
somewhere for its inventors. This is just what we do 
find. The trouble is especially in evidence when we 
try to explain the relation between mind and body and 
when we try to give a consistent theory of the nature 
of knowledge. 

1 In this connection the reader is reminded of the discussion of think- 
ing in Chapters VI and VII. 



190 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

As regards the relation of mind and body, it will 
be observed that a mental state has no advantage over 
a substantial soul. Granted that we cannot conceive 
how this soul can act upon the brain, do we not have 
precisely the same difficulty if we withdraw the soul 
and substitute for it a string of mental states? The 
mental state, like the soul, is nonspacial, and for this 
reason it seems to have nothing in common with matter. 
It has been argued, by way of reply to this objection, 
that a criticism of this kind is wide of the mark, since 
so little is known about the real nature of causation. 
But if we turn to physical causation, we have at least 
the advantage that all our facts are, as it were, of the 
same denominator. Physical causes occupy space and 
conform to the law of the conservation of energy and 
the laws of motion. But the whole aspect of the situ- 
ation undergoes a change the moment we attempt to 
make mental states operative causes. How shall we 
go about it to make a psychical cause, such as an idea, 
operate upon a physical fact? If it is to work as a cause, 
it must bring about some change in the movements of 
the material particles of the brain. But here lies the 
difficulty. Does the idea exert a push or pull upon 
these particles from the side, from the top, or from 
underneath? This suggestion, it will be said, is ab- 
surd, since the idea, being nonspacial, cannot be sup- 
posed to lay violent hands, in this crude physical 
fashion, upon matter. Precisely; but this means that 
it cannot do anything to matter at all. Matter is 



THE DOCTRINE OF MENTAL STATES 191 

spacial, while ideas are nonspacial; matter can exer- 
cise push and pull, while ideas cannot. The two seem 
to have no point of contact; they have their beings 
on different planes, which do not intersect. How there 
can be any dynamic relationship passes all understand- 
ing. To borrow an illustration quoted by James, we 
might as well try to imagine that a heavy freight 
train, broken in two in the middle, could be held to- 
gether by the bond of affection between the fireman 
in the engine cab and the brakeman in the caboose. 

The doctrine that the mind (or mental states) is in 
interaction with the body is known at the present time 
as interactionism. At present the adherents of this 
doctrine, among professional psychologists, are appar- 
ently in the minority. To many psychologists the dif- 
ficulties urged against interactionism are well-nigh in- 
superable. They are disposed to take the view that 
merely to dismiss the soul while retaining the notion 
of interaction does not profit us much. If we are to 
rid ourselves effectively of the soul-tradition, we must 
do a thorough job and deny all causal relation between 
the mental and the physical. It is only on this basis 
that clear and consistent thinking is possible. A phys- 
ical event must be explained wholly in terms of physi- 
cal antecedents or causes, for the physical world is a 
closed system. It permits no interference on the part 
of nonphysical causes, and the principle of the con- 
servation of energy remains unimpugned. Matter 
neither produces mind nor does mind in any way 



192 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

affect the movements of matter. ''Every brain pro- 
cess, like every reflex activity, is presumably the result 
of physicochemical processes. The assumption of a 
mysterious intuition or 'psychic force' adds nothing 
to the mechanistic explanation, even when the latter 
is most fragmentary. '^ In explaining the behavior of 
the living organism, therefore, it is quite unnecessary, 
and even improper, to make any reference to desire, 
intention, or purpose. This view which denies all in- 
teraction between mind and matter is commonly known 
as the doctrine of parallelism. 

To common sense a theory of this kind is bound to 
seem exceedingly strange. I go out to keep an appoint- 
ment, or sit down to write a letter, yet these acts, ac- 
cording to parallelism, are in no wise influenced by my 
intention. So far as the actual execution of the act 
is concerned, consciousness is just an innocent onlooker, 
or concomitant; it has no right or power to interfere 
with the smooth operation of the neural machinery. 
Everything that goes on in the body must be explained 
in terms of physical causes, and in terms of physical 
causes alone. Our consciousness simply shows how 
the machinery is running; it tags along in much the 
same way that a man's shadow accompanies him down 
the street. 

If it is objected that there are many activities which 
cannot be explained in mechanical terms alone, the 
reply is made that the possibilities of mechanism may 
be much greater than we ordinarily suppose. The 



THE DOCTRINE OF MENTAL STATES 193 

vital functions, for example, that go on within the 
body are marvelously complex and adaptive, yet no 
one imagines that they are presided over by a con- 
trolling intelligence. The body is not only able to 
perform complex operations of a uniform and more 
or less recurrent character, such as digestion, circula- 
tion, and adaptations to meet the changes in tempera- 
ture, but it can also meet special emergencies. It can 
mend broken bones, heal a wound, and even resort 
to such extraordinary expedients as walling off an out- 
lying portion of the lungs, in order that the disease which 
has found a foothold there may not spread to adjacent 
parts. Experiments with headless frogs have shown 
that many complicated acts of adjustment are pos- 
sible without the intervention of intelligence; and 
sleepwalkers have been known to perform astounding 
feats when consciousness is apparently quite absent. 
In view of such facts, so it is argued, it seems rather 
dogmatic to say in advance that acts of volition can- 
not be explained in the same way. Why not, then, 
take the last remaining step and reduce all behavior 
to the type of mechanism? 

It appears, then, that the reasons which dethroned 
the scholastic soul and substituted for it the stream of 
mental states now lead us by a remorseless logic to the 
conclusion that control by intelligence is a delusion. 
With this conclusion both interactionism and paral- 
lelism are fundamentally in agreement, although the 
implication is not always frankly admitted. Like 



I 



194 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

every other important theory concerning mind or in- 
telligence, this view involves far-reaching consequences 
as regards oiu" conceptions of conduct. If mechanism 
is fully competent to explain all forms of behavior, it 
is evident that we must revise our notions of respon- 
sibility. We do not attach praise or blame to a piece 
of mechanism, no matter how it works, and there is no 
reason why we should do so in the case of human 
beings. The suggestion is sometimes made, for ex- 
ample, that the criminal or minor offender who incurs 
our condemnation misbehaves so grievously because 
he is not put together just right; the mechanism is 
out of gear or else it is not adapted to its surround- 
ings, like a locomotive that has left the track and 
tears up the landscape. The offender is not so much 
an evildoer as a pathological case. Views of this kind 
do not necessarily base themselves squarely upon psy- 
chological theory, but the logic by which the conclu- 
sions are reached have much in common in the two 
cases. Intelligence is subordinated to mechanism. 

Conclusions of this kind are doubtless offensive to 
common sense, but the links in the chain of reasoning 
by which they are established are not easily broken. 
Consequently our thinking on the subject is apt to be 
more or less hazy; we neither wholly accept nor wholly 
deny. Individual responsibility and intelligent guid- 
ance are facts, but so is the explanation of behavior 
in terms of physical antecedents or conditions. We 
cannot go back to a doctrine which we have outgrown, 



THE DOCTRINE OF MENTAL STATES 195 

like that of the soul; but neither can we sur- 
render ourselves completely to the tender mercies of 
mechanism. Such a state of indecision cannot be 
permanent. Sooner or later we shall be compelled 
to choose between the hard, cold facts and our belief 
that intelligent control and individual responsibility 
are a reality. There can be no escape from this issue, 
unless it should appear that we were mistaken in what 
we assumed to be the facts. 

Before taking up the consideration of this possibil- 
ity, we may repeat that the psychology of mental 
states is no more able to shed light on the question of 
the relation of intelligence to behavior than is the soul 
theory upon which it loves to heap aspersion. The 
doctrine of interaction encounters, as we have seen, 
much the same difficulties as those of its predecessor. 
And the pronunciamento of parallelism that there is 
no causal relation between mind and matter is chiefly 
of a negative character. It tells us what the relation 
of the two is not, although it does not deny that there 
is a relation of a peculiarly intimate character. If the 
pain that follows a burn is not caused by the changes 
that take place in the body as a result of a contact 
with the flame, neither is the occurrence of the pain 
just a matter of coincidence. But parallelism has not 
been able as yet to give a consistent or even intelligible 
account of the relation between mental states and 
cerebral processes. What it means to be a 'living 
soul" is apparently as much of a mystery as ever. 



196 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

But the case for mental states appears to even worse 
advantage, if we turn to what is usually called epis- 
temology or theory of knowledge. Unfortunately, an 
adequate showing of the shortcomings, in this direction, 
of the doctrine under discussion would take us too far 
afield, so the chief underlying difficulty can only be in- 
dicated in passing. This difficulty centers in the con- 
ception of the nature of mental states. In spite of 
prodigious discussion and wrangling, our conception of 
the nature and function of mental states remains funda- 
mentally unclear. If we look at a tree, for example, shall 
we call this experience a tree or shall we call it a mental 
state? Shall we say that the tree which we see is yonder 
Jby the brook, or that it is in our heads or in our minds? 
The question may be slurred over by vagueness of think- 
ing, but it remains to haunt us nevertheless. If what 
we see is a tree, then we cannot call it a mental state 
and say that it is immaterial and nonspacial; and on 
the other hand, if it is a mental state, we cannot say 
that a mental sjtate is yonder by the brook. In other 
words, if we first assume that we know only mental 
states and that these are as different as possible from 
matter, it is by no means evident how we can ever 
know anything about matter at all. We may speak 
of two series, one mental and the other physical, going 
on side by side, but there is no gainsaying the fact 
that we have direct access to but one of these two, and 
that what we commonly call the physical series is not 
physical at all but mental. 



THE DOCTRINE OF MENTAL STATES 197 

In the last resort, the doctrine of mental states ex- 
plains intelligent behavior by explaining it away. It 
finds nothing in intelligent behavior that differentiates 
it in a significant way from the behavior of inanimate 
objects. This conclusion rests ultimately upon a mis- 
interpretation of the facts of behavior. The discus- 
sion of this topic must be deferred to the next chapter, 
where it will be shown that the relation which this 
doctrine assumes to exist between consciousness and 
response is open to serious question and that a rein- 
terpretation of the relationship brings with it a differ- 
ent conception of mind and of its relation to behavior. 
But enough has been said, perhaps, to justify the sus- 
picion that mental states, as they have figured in the 
present discussion, are plain fictions. The trouble with 
the doctrine is that it is, in the end, just a halfway 
measure. If it is really necessary to reject the 
traditional soul-substance, we should be in earnest 
about it, and the doctrine in question is not in 
earnest at this point. Mental states are, in truth, 
nothing but a pale and ghostly image of the soul; 
or as one critic expresses it, they are *^a mere echo, 
the faint rumor left behind by the disappearing 
'sour upon the air of philosophy." Instead of a 
compromise that merely reduces the soul to an at- 
tenuated form called mental state, our reinterpre- 
tation must be more thoroughgoing and must be 
conducted on an entirely different level. An adequate 
comprehension of the nature and function of intelli- 



198 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

gence can be attained only by a reconsideration of the 
facts of behavior. 

REFERENCES 

Dewey, J. — Democracy and Education, ch. 25. 

Huxley, T. — Methods and Results, ch. 5 C'On the Hypothesis 

that Animals are Automata")- 
James, W. — Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, ch. 5. 
McDouGALL, W. — Body and Mind, chs. 11, 12, 26. 
Pearson, K. — Grammar of Science, ch. 2. 
Strong, C. — Why the Mind Has a Body, chs. 4, 5, 6, 7. 
Warren, H. C. — "The Mental and the 'Physical" ] Psychological 

Review, Vol. XXI. 
WooDWORTH, R. S. and Ladd, G. T. — Elements of Physiological 

Psychology, Part III, ch. 1, 



CHAPTER XI 

CONSCIOUSNESS AS BEHAVIOR 

The preceding discussion of soul-substance and of 
mental states has failed to give us a tenable theory, 
but has tended rather to deepen the mystery. What 
is this peculiar and significant something called con- 
sciousness? The theory of consciousness that we may 
happen to hold is bound to have important bearings 
on our theory of education and of life. But the sub- 
ject is one of peculiar difficulty. The two theories 
already examined are merely representative of numer- 
ous attempts to solve the problem, but the quality of 
mystery has not been dispelled. Small wonder, then, 
that men have frequently become skeptical of explan- 
ation and have preferred to regard consciousness as the 
"divine spark" which bears witness to an origin in an- 
other world beyond the domain of natural law. Amid 
so much wreckage of theory, it may seem hazardous, 
not to say presumptuous, to raise once more the pre- 
vious question. A careful survey of the situation, 
however, suggests that the failure of earlier efforts 
was not due primarily to anything occult or inscru- 
table in the nature of consciousness, but rather resulted 
from the fact that a tenable theory of consciousness 
could not be reached save on the basis of the knowl- 

199 



200 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

edge which we find placed at our disposal by modern 
science. 

Given certain information regarding the develop- 
ment of intelligence and the physical conditions under 
which it operates, we may approach our problem with 
some assurance, or at least some hope, of success. 
On the other hand, the lack of this information 
is bound to prove fatal. An illustration or two may 
be given to indicate why the earliest speculations con- 
cerning consciousness inevitably resulted in disaster. 
As a parallel case we may take the notion of weight. 
That material bodies possess the attribute of weight 
is one of the commonest facts of our experience. This 
knowledge, moreover, is sufficiently accurate for the 
ordinary affairs of life, and is constantly applied in 
avoiding injury from falls, in cutting down trees, in 
building houses and bridges, in loading ships, etc. 
But what sort of thing is weight? What is it that 
causes unsupported bodies to fall? In the presence of 
this question we are tempted to make an examination 
of objects in order to find out what makes them be- 
have that way, much as a child tries to pry open its 
rattle to see what it is that makes the noise. Such a 
procedure is on a level with that of the savage medi- 
cine man who tries to drive away sickness by a loud 
beating of drums, the sickness being regarded, not as 
a condition or state of the organism, but as a thing of 
some sort; e.g., an evil spirit, which has taken up 
its abode for the time being somewhere under the 



CONSCIOUSNESS AS BEHAVIOR 201 

skin of the afflicted individual. A supposition of this 
sort is of course as fallacious as it was historically 
inevitable. We know now that sickness is a name 
for the fact that the organs of the body are function- 
ing improperly; but before this could become known 
it was necessary to have some information about the 
bodily organs and their functions. Similarly, the ten- 
dency to regard weight as a peculiar something which 
made objects tend to move toward a fixed point, or 
an absolute '^down,'^^could not be overcome until the 
discovery of the law of gravitation had taught us that 
there is no such absolute ^^down,'' but that bodies 
move only with reference to one another. In other 
words, sickness or weight are not things that a person 
carries about with him like a pocketknife or a watch, 
but are rather functions or modes of behavior which 
can be understood and described only in terms of the 
relations which things sustain to one another. 

The tendency to treat functions or relations concern- 
ing which little is known as though they were things 
located somewhere in space is a perfectly natural and 
excusable tendency. We treat them like physical ob- 
jects or qualities, because we are aware of no reason 
to the contrary. Too often, however, we yield to this 
tendency even when we are supposed to know better. 
The statement, for example, that objects fall to the 
ground because gravitation pulls them, may pass for 
a perfectly satisfactory explanation, simply because 
we do not stop to reflect that gravitation is the name 



202 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

of a mode of behavior, not the name of an agent or 
cause. In other words, gra\dtation is just a name for 
falling, not a designation of a cause. Similarly, it may 
content us to be told that sliding is more difficult on 
wood than on ice because the friction is greater. We 
accept this as an explanation, because we overlook the 
fact that friction is synonjonous with hard sliding; 
i.e., instead of offering an explanation, we are simply 
giving the fact a name. Or, again, we may be told 
that certain substances unite because they have an 
affinity for one another, that a man's word is as good 
as his bond because his character is above suspicion, 
or that he is scrupulously honest because he has a 
very exacting conscience. Thus do names afford a 
convenient escape from the painful labor of thinking. 
These illustrations indicate, in a general way, a 
primitive conception of consciousness to which great 
philosophers have given the sanction of their authority, 
and which is still widely entertained. Men knew that 
they possessed consciousness, but having Httle knowl- 
edge about it in detail, they thought of it as a kind of 
thing located somewhere in the body, presumably in 
the head. The convenience of this notion is doubtless 
an important reason for its popularity, even though it 
is impossible to say how a nonspacial thing can be in 
the head or anywhere else, or how consciousness of 
this sort can control the operations of the body. But 
the growth of detailed information renders this con- 
ception increasingly difficult and converges more and 



CONSCIOUSNESS AS BEHAVIOR 203 

more upon the conclusion that consciousness, like sick- 
ness or weight, is in no proper sense a thing, but rather 
a function or mode of behavior.^ 

To put the matter differently, the conviction is gain- 
ing ground that our previous reflections on conscious- 
ness or mind have been vitiated by our preconceptions 
or mode of approach. To take for granted that the 
human individual has a mind somewhere about his 
person is much like assuming that a frog carries about 
under its skin a miscellaneous assortment of jumps. 
In the case of the frog it is evident enough that the 
jumps are nothing more than certain activities engaged 
in at various times, and that the proper way to get 
information about jumping is not to inspect the frog 
in order to locate the jumps, but to study the condi- 
tions (including the structure of the frog) under which 
the jumping takes place. But, as was pointed out a 
moment ago, this is less obvious when we are dealing 
with such matters as weight and sickness; and the 
attempt to apply such a procedure to consciousness 
or mind is bound, at first sight, to appear rather 
fantastic. Nevertheless there is considerable warrant 
for the view that consciousness, like jumping, is not a 
having but a doing, not a static possession, but a form 
of behavior. 

If we approach the problem of mind from the side 
of behavior, we cannot fail to notice a marked differ- 

iCf. Ethel E. Sabin, "Giving up the Ghost," in the Journal of 
Philosophy, Vol. XVII, p. 701. 



204 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

ence between the activities of those beings which are 
credited with consciousness and those which are not. 
This difference is usually indicated by saying that it 
consists in the ability to learn, or to profit by expe- 
rience. The lack of intelligence shows itself in the 
inability to modify or adapt response so as to suit 
the needs of the occasion. In the experiments on the 
frog cited by James, it is shown that a frog deprived 
of the use of the higher brain centers and thus pre- 
sumably unconscious, can perform all the complex acts 
of which a normal frog is capable. It can jump, swim, 
turn over when placed on its back, keep on the upper 
side, if a log on which it is seated is gently rolled over, 
etc. But there is something curiously mechanical and 
predictable about its acts. It behaves very much like 
an ingenious toy; i.e., it shows no disposition to 
vary its behavior so as to makeTt more suitable to the 
circumstances of the moment >; It jumps or swims 
in response to the stimulus of ^ a stick or of contact 
with water, but it does not seek to avoid the im- 
pact of a descending stick or go, in search of water or 
of food. Each situation calls f6rth the same unvary- 
ing response, regardless of what has gone before. 

This inflexible, machine-like form of behavior is 
sometimes exhibited by normal animals as well, when 
a variation in the behavior would be very much to their 
advantage. A fish, for example, if taken from the 
hook and thrown back into the water, is likely to 
take the same hook a second time; it has learned noth- 



CONSCIOUSNESS AS BEHAVIOR 205 

ing from the first experience. The baited hook re- 
mains for the fish the same object that it was on the 
first occasion, in the sense that it evokes precisely the 
same reaction. 

The peculiar difficulty that some of the lower ani- 
mals have in modifying their behavior as a result of 
previous disasters is strikingly shown by the story of 
Mobius^s pike. ''This celebrated pike was kept in a 
part of an aquarium separated by a glass plate from an 
adjoining part which contained several minnows. The 
pike made frequent dashes for the minnows and each 
time received a bump against the glass plate. After 
about three months of attempts to catch the minnows 
the pike became convinced that his efforts were fruit- 
less and they were given up. The glass partition was 
then taken away. The pike, which had come to 
associate darting after the minnows with bumps on its 
nose, left the minnows unmolested thereafter, being 
apparently unaware of the removal of the impediment 
to catching its prey.'' ^ Instead of learning from one 
or two trials that the minnows had better be let 
alone, the fish had to have the new form of response 
quite literally pounded into its head, and even then it 
failed to associate its troubles with the glass partition 
in the aquarium. 

This contrast between mechanical and intelligent 
behavior defines our problem. It remains to consider 
this contrast more in detail. From our present stand- 

1 Holmes, S. J. — The Evolution of Animal Intelligence, p. 219. 



206 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

point intelligence or mind consists in the ability to 
adapt conduct to the needs of the moment. A high 
degree of intelligence, accordingly, means a high de- 
gree of flexibility or indeterminateness of response. 
As we go down the scale of animal intelligence, the 
behavior which at the upper end is relatively flexible 
and adaptable becomes more and more fixed and auto- 
matic. The lower down we go, the more rigid and 
unyielding the neural mechanism becomes. The nerv- 
ous systems become more and more of the single- 
track variety, so that an incoming nerve current is 
bound to issue in a predetermined response, with no 
possibility of being switched off as it goes along. Ani- 
mals with this kind of nervous system have a certain 
advantage over others from the fact that they are en- 
dowed from birth with a set of reflexes which make 
them incomparably more efficient than the young of 
the higher animals at the same age. Some of these 
lower animals have no period of infancy at all. Nature 
has so equipped them that they are able to make their 
way independently from the start. The mechanisms 
for running, dodging, seizing and eating their food 
are developed and operative from the first moment, 
and even complicated operations, such as nest build- 
ing and the storing of honey, are provided for by the 
neural machinery. The chick pecks at small objects, 
the fish pursues its prey, and the snake strikes at an 
enemy, without having had any previous experience or 
education in the performance of these acts. The en- 



CONSCIOUSNESS AS BEHAVIOR 207 

vironment merely presses the button and the reflex 
mechanism does the rest. 

The undoubted advantage, however, that Hes in the 
possession of these convenient reflexes is bought with 
a price. The animals that are so enormously compe- 
tent from the moment of birth never learn a great 
deal. In order to give these reflexes the efficiency that 
is required, the neural connections must apparently be 
rigid and inflexible. As a consequence, therefore, the 
animal keeps doing the same thing over and over again; 
its behavior is of the "touch and go'^ order, like pull- 
ing the hairtrigger of a gun; there is no opportunity 
for reflection and choice. These reflexes, however, 
serve as an acceptable substitute for intelligence as 
long as the environment is relatively simple, requiring 
no considerable variation in behavior. A nervous sys- 
tem of this kind cannot be modified or '^educated'' 
very appreciably; i.e., it is incapable of varying its 
behavior so as to respond differently to the same object. 
On the other hand, the more educable animal has a 
nervous system that is constantly undergoing changes 
as a result of its activities, so that its subsequent be- 
havior is modified by what has gone before. This 
capacity for change, which makes it possible to achieve 
adaptations not provided for by the congenital struc- 
ture of the nervous system, is especially marked in 
early life. It is not strange, therefore, that, in gen- 
eral, the period of infancy varies, as to length, with the 
teachability of the animal, and that it reaches a maxi- 



208 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

mum of length in the case of human beings. In a sense 
it is true, of course, that education goes on throughout 
Hfe, but when the golden period of youth is once past 
we tend to '^settle into an equilibrium and live on what 
we learned when our interest was fresh and instinctive, 
without adding to the store. Outside of their own 
business, the ideas gained by men before they are 
twenty-five are practically the only ideas they will 
have in their lives. They cannot get anything new. 
Disinterested curiosity is past, the mental grooves and 
channels set, the power of assimilation gone.'' ^ 

That living beings come into the world with cer- 
tain preformed motor equipments is an undoubted 
fact. For the sake of simplicity these reflex adapta- 
tions have been represented in the foregoing account 
as though they operated in more or less complete in- 
dependence of one another. If this were strictly true, 
however, consciousness could never arise. As a matter 
of fact, the structure of the nervous system tells a very 
different story. The various systems of response are 
not divided from one another by water-tight compart- 
ments, but present possibilities of overlapping that are 
indefinitely complex. The same motor apparatus, we 
find, may be set off by different stimulations, and con- 
versely, the same stimulation may set off different 
systems of response; and the complications of response 
that are thus made possible provide the conditions for 
the appearance of consciousness upon the scene. 

* James, W. — Principles of Psychology, Vol. II, p. 402. 



CONSCIOUSNESS AS BEHAVIOR 209 

An instance of a motor apparatus that is subject to 
more than one source of stimulation is furnished by the 
eye, which may be controlled by excitations that come 
in either from the retina or by way of the auditory 
nerve. In either case the neural impulse traverses a 
course that has been determined to some degree in 
advance. Similarly a sneeze may be inhibited by 
pinching the nose or upper lip, which means that an 
excitation coming from one source is offset by an exci- 
tation coming from another, both of them being some- 
how brought to bear upon the same motor apparatus. 
Stimulations may tend to strengthen or else to neu- 
tralize one another. Hence it is that men on the 
battle field may receive serious and even fatal wounds 
without being aware of the fact, and sights or sounds 
that would ordinarily attract our attention may pass 
unheeded because we are in a '^ brown" study, the 
mechanism being temporarily inhibited from that par- 
ticular form of response. On the other hand, pain is 
increased by noise or light, and music gives an added 
relish to our food. With regard to excitations that are 
capable of setting off more than one form of response, 
a rich field of illustrations is offered by the facts of 
association. Thus a word like ^^fire'^ may suggest a 
conflagration, a military command, or the story of 
Prometheus. In view of the endless interfacings of 
the nervous system there can be no guarantee that an 
incoming stimulus will have the field all to itself, or 
that its course is laid down unalterably. Other pro- 



210 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

cesses, whether favorable or unfavorable to it, are likely 
to be already on the ground, and dispersal into differ- 
ent systems of response may be its fate; and our be- 
havior is m consequence rather a constant adaptation 
and organization of different tendencies than of activ- 
ities operating in complete isolation and with im- 
mutable fixity. 

This complexity of organization, with its attendant 
possibilities of discord and conflict in the responses 
that are set up, becomes more and more prominent as 
we go up the scale of animal life. The higher ani- 
mals, like the lower, are provided by nature with vari- 
ous reflexes, but they are subject to greater modifica- 
tion as the result of mutual interference. In the 
human animal, for example, the mechanisms for the 
performance of such functions as breathing, swallow- 
ing, kicking, sucking, clutching, etc., are present from 
the start ; and others, like walking and winking, make 
their appearance later on. Every muscle, in fact, can 
be controlled by some center other than the cerebral 
cortex. But the greater complexity of organization 
seems to bring with it a more pronounced tendency 
toward interference. The pike of our previous illustra- 
tion continued to make dashes for the minnows, be- 
cause the mechanism which made these dashes possible 
remained for a long time unmodified by the bumps 
against the glass plate. In a more highly organized 
animal the movement of attack and the movement of 
withdrawal (as a result of the bumps) would soon have 



CONSCIOUSNESS AS BEHAVIOR 211 

become associated; so that they would have been set 
off simultaneously. The movements would then have 
got in each other's way, so that the immediate out- 
come or resultant would have been a state of 
equilibrium, perhaps, or a much reduced movement, 
accompanied by a conflict or tension. If we imagine 
a puppet controlled by strings, so that a pull on one 
string makes the arm go up, while a pull on another 
string makes the arm go down, then if a number of 
these strings were pulled at once, the tendency of these 
pulls would be to set up a tension with comparatively 
little movement. The situation is converted into a 
deadlock. 

It is in situations of this sort that consciousness 
has its origin. The appearance of consciousness means 
that mechanical behavior has gone into bankruptcy — 
and that its affairs have been placed in the hands of 
a receiver. To speak less metaphorically, the appear- 
ance of consciousness means that a new type of behavior 
supervenes. The clash of the conflicting responses is 
evidence that the organism has failed to adapt itself 
properly to its environment and is therefore in a state of 
maladjustment. If the organism is to secure adjust- 
ment, some method must be provided whereby these con- 
flicting responses can be made to cooperate in the in- 
terests of an adaptive end. In the case of reflexes, 
such as digestion, this cooperation of different re- 
sponses is brought about by the fact that certain 
connections are antecedently present in the nervous 



212 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

system. Each of the various activities concerned in 
digestion plays its part quite as though it had an 
understanding with its fellows, or else were working 
under intelligent direction. But the direction is, of 
course, furnished by the neural organization, which was 
effected in the remote past, through Natural Selection 
or in some other way, and transmitted by heredity. 
However the organization may have been brought 
about, the result is admirable. Under normal condi- 
tions each of the activities concerned performs its serv- 
ice at the proper time and in the proper way. There 
is no crowding in order to get into action ahead of 
time; there is no undue interference of the one with 
the other. This orderliness and purposiveness is the 
result of our native endowment; and this organiza- 
tion is precisely what is lacking in the situations de- 
scribed a moment ago. In these situations the re- 
sponses have become snarled up, and an organization 
must be provided which will fit the particular case; 
which means that a new form of behavior is required 
if adaptation to the environment is to be secured. 

If we take our clue from the evolutionary concept 
of adaptation, this new behavior is due to the fact 
that a new stimulus comes upon the scene. Up to 
the moment that the living being becomes conscious, 
the mechanical stimulation is such as to produce in- 
hibition and maladaptation. If this is to be followed 
by adaptive behavior, a different stimulus; i.e., a dif- 
ferent sort of control over the organism, must supervene. 



CONSCIOUSNESS AS BEHAVIOR 213 

This is precisely what happens in conscious behavior, 
and if we can mark off the distinctive trait of this new 
stimulus, we shall have the explanation of consciousness. 

This distinctive trait, however, is more easily verified 
than described. An automobile, for example, will 
run into a mess of broken glass as unhesitatingly as 
in any other direction; the tires respond to the situa- 
tion by scattering the glass and exploding, but this is 
purely mechanical response. The pedestrian, on the 
contrary, picks his way carefully so as to avoid the 
glass. His response is of a totally different kind. In 
the first place, the previous activity of walking has 
come into conflict with this new reaction, ^'avoidance 
of the glass." And, secondly, a process of reorganiza- 
tion has taken place. The walking is not just discon- 
tinued, but is so modified as to leave room for the 
movement of avoidance. The pedestrian walks on, 
but keeps away from the glass. It would seem, there- 
fore, that this reorganization of activity contains the 
secret of conscious behavior. 

As was indicated previously, this reorganization 
means that the body is controlled by a different sort 
of stimulus. If, for example, a hungry person sees a 
tempting morsel, his mouth waters, and his jaw tends 
to move at the same time that his hand goes out 
.towards the food. The various reactions are set off 
simultaneously, in accordance with the physiological 
law of habit, as though the nervous system were re- 
hearsing beforehand all the steps in the act of eating. 



214 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

The object is, so to speak, being grasped and eaten 
before it is even touched. As long as these various 
activities are just reactions to mechanical stimulations, 
they block one another and produce a state of tension 
and inhibition; but under the guidance of this new 
stimulus they take their place in an orderly sequence so 
as to bring about adaptive behavior. 

This takes us to the center of the plot. How does 
the stimulus contrive to organize the activities into 
this orderly sequence? The reactions are present si- 
multaneously, but the hand must first be extended, 
then the object must be grasped, then removed to the 
mouth and eaten. The apple as seen is something to 
be reached for, to be grasped, to be removed to the 
mouth, and to be eaten. This, as we commonly say, 
is what the object means. But the reactions are, as 
yet, more or less unorganized; which means that the 
stimulus is still inadequate. It is necessary to focus 
the attention upon the object so as to guide the hand 
in reaching and grasping. The apple as first per- 
ceived becomes a stimulus to further looking, the pur- 
pose of this further looking being to make the mean- 
ing more definite; i.e., to localize the object with as 
much precision as may be necessary for effective reach- 
ing and grasping. Until this is done the reaching is 
inhibited. Instead of the reaching, other activities, 
such as looking, are set up, which change the object, 
or give it the meaning that is necessary before con- 
scious reaching can take place . The conflicting activities. 



CONSCIOUSNESS AS BEHAVIOR 215 

therefore, become organized into orderly conduct by 
inducing activities through which the stimulus acquires 
the further meanings that are necessary for this end. 

In this connection the behavior of a dog, in the presence 
of a strange object, is instructive. The dog keeps a 
watchful eye on the object, keeps its ear cocked for 
possible sounds, and, if possible, takes an inventory 
of the smells inhering in the object. His activities, 
such as barking at the object, nipping it, and perhaps 
turning it over, are of a sort to give him a better 
stimulus. For the time being he is uncertain; he is 
prepared both to advance and to retreat, to eat the 
possible food and to fight the possible enemy. The 
present object, accordingly, acts as a stimulus to secur- 
ing a better stimulus, or, as we sometimes say, to finding 
out what sort of object it really is. And this is character- 
istic of all conscious behavior. Psychologists are 
agreed that all consciousness involves some measure 
of attention. But attention is just an interrogation 
point; it is, as James says, a sentinel with the ever- 
lasting challenge, ^'Who goes there?" We are con- 
stantly aiming at new meanings; and this, when put 
into biological language, is equivalent to saying that 
conscious behavior is always a quest for a more ade- 
quate stimulus. 

This behavior constitutes what is commonly called 
'^consciousness." It appears, then, that consciousness is 
an abstract term, like squareness or justice. What is 
designated is not a distinct existence, but a behavior 



216 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

of a certain kind. This behavior is unique in that it 
is behavior which is directed towards getting a better 
stimulus. A stimulus thus made over is a stimulus 
that is made more meaningful; and consciousness, ac- 
cordingly, may be defined as behavior that seeks a better 
stimulus or a more adequate meaning. 

The term "meaning," as used in this connection, is 
simply a name for the change that things undergo so as 
to become more effective for the control of behavior. 
As a result of such change, we become enabled to see 
the chair as something to sit on, the ball as something 
to be rolled or thrown, the pencil as something to be 
used for writing or drawing. When these changes have 
come about, the objects are said to have taken on new 
meanings.* Objects or situations become thus trans- 
formed through conscious behavior, which they them- 
selves evoke and direct. Behavior of this kind is 
essentially experimental, forward-looking, controlled by 
the future. 

This change which things undergo in the interests of 
behavior is the process by which experience grows from 
more to more. If a child accustomed to playing with 
dogs is bitten by a dog, the dog's appearance undergoes 
a change; he now looks '^ fierce '^ or ^'dangerous,'' and the 
behavior is varied accordingly. The objects of our envi- 
ronment thus undergo a progressive transformation, and 

1 Meaning in this sense is equivalent to recognition and must be 
distinguished carefully from concepts. (See pp. 106, 107.) The latter 
are objects of a new kind, which men themselves create and use for the 
effective control of behavior. 



CONSCIOUSNESS AS BEHAVIOR 217 

as things take on more meaning, there gradually emerges 
the everyday world of our normal adult experience. 
A trivial instance of this process is furnished by puzzle 
pictures. At first the picture as we see it is nothing 
but a mass of lines variously interlaced and spread 
over the page in a hit-and-miss fashion. But pres- 
ently a human face emerges from the tangle. A mo- 
ment before we were utterly unable to see it, but now 
it sticks out like a sore thumb; and the wonder is 
how we ever failed to see what is so flagrantly and 
palpably obvious. Once the face is discovered, it be- 
comes next to impossible to see the picture as we saw 
it before the discovery was made. The lines remain 
unchanged in one sense, but not in another; they 
have a new character that marks a new adaptation, 
and this makes all the difference in the world. 

Such astonishing transmutations are convincing evi- 
dence that seeing is not just a matter of passively 
'^ taking in" what is before our eyes. The object fairly 
flops over, as it were, and shows itself in a new per- 
spective. The transformation of the puzzle picture is 
duplicated, though in a less spectacular way, in our 
everyday speech. The language that we speak has 
now a sound for us which it did not have before and 
which it cannot have for any one who is unable to 
understand it. The words that we use habitually ac- 
quire a mellowness from their meaning that completely 
overlies the harsh and discordant sounds which offend 
the uncomprehending ear. Tastes and smells change 




218 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

their quality the moment we manage to recognize 
them, and the same is true of tactual experience, when 
the hand encounters strange objects in a dark room. 
The notion that our senses passively reflect their sur- 
roundings, as the sensitive plate in a camera repro- 
duces its object, is contradicted at every point. How 
we shall perceive a thing is determined by the response 
that is evoked. 

As our behavior becomes increasingly adapted to 
our environment, our experiences change in correspond- 
ing fashion. The fundamental role of behavior in this 
connection is easily overlooked, not only because the 
responses in ordinary experience are for the most part 
so slight as to escape detection, but also because we 
have forgotten the process by which the world has 
come to be for us what we now find it to be. It is 
difficult for us to imagine that famihar objects, such 
as tables, chairs, clocks, and pictures, to which we have 
become thoroughly adjusted, should ever have ap- 
peared different from what they do now. It is not 
self-evident to us that our perceptions, like our bodies, 
have had a long history and course of development. 
But perception likewise has its day of small begin- 
nings. ''The baby," as James says, ''assailed by eyes, 
ears, nose, skin, and entrails at once, feels it all as 
one great, blooming, buzzing confusion"; and out of 
this buzzing confusion the things of everyday experi- 
ence emerge in the course of time, much as objects 
take shape in the puzzle picture. The most remarkable 



CONSCIOUSNESS AS BEHAVIOR 219 

thing about the perception of children is their inabiHty 
to see. The most outrageously transparent sleight of 
hand is entirely successful with them, and differences 
which are unmistakable to an adult with respect to the 
size, number, and color of objects, escape them 
completely. 

If we draw the inference which facts like these seem 
to warrant; viz., that there is an exact correspondence 
between the objects of our experience and the responses 
taking place in the nervous system, we get another per- 
spective on the meaning of consciousness. In the con- 
scious situation there is always, by hypothesis, a con- 
flict of responses and a process of reorganization and 
adjustment. There are, indeed, certain reactions, but 
these are undergoing modification of some sort. The 
responses, therefore, are partly complete and partly 
still in the making. They are partly complete in the 
sense that the nervous system has a native or acquired 
structure which gives direction to the reaction; but 
they are incomplete in that this structure is under- 
going modification as a result of the conflict that is 
going on. The correspondence between response and 
object suggests that there must be a similar distinc- 
tion or contrast on the side of the object. In part or 
to some extent, the object is a finished thing, but never 
wholly so. To be conscious is to give attention, and 
attention means a certain incompleteness, which, under 
certain conditions, is experienced as vagueness or a 
'^blur." This peculiar quality of experience has some- 



r 



220 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

times been called the ''psychic," and it bears witness 
to the fact that the objects of experience are under- 
going reconstruction. The whole process is off its 
balance; and the unique way in which the object 
and the body cooperate and undergo concomitant 
changes to secure adjustment is what we have previ- 
ously called consciousness or conscious behavior. 

The shifting and '' unfinished '^ character of our re- 
actions appears when we consider the facts of asso- 
ciation. If our attention lingers on an object, we are 
soon reminded of something else; our thoughts are as 
unstable as the waves of the sea. The plant that I 
stop to notice may remind me of the garden at home, 
of the Burbank experiments, of natural selection, or of 
the transiency of life. Likewise the color may bring 
to mind the blue of the ocean or the splendor of the 
setting sun; or again it may suggest the spectrum and 
ether waves, or problems of color contrast and theories 
of vision. It is as though our whole past were trying 
to crowd itself into the present moment. Things that 
have been previously associated with the object seem 
to come up on the slightest provocation; and in addi- 
tion to these, all sorts of things that have never been 
associated directly with the present object may be 
brought in through association by similarity. Some- 
times these associates just fail to arrive, and they 
haunt us like the elusive echo of a forgotten name. 
'''What is the strange difference between an experience 
tasted for the first time and the same experience recog- 



CONSCIOUSNESS AS BEHAVIOR 221 

nized as familiar, as having been enjoyed before, 
though we cannot name it or say where or when? 
A tune, an odor, a flavor sometimes carry this inar- 
ticulate feeling of their familiarity so deep into our 
consciousness that we are fairly shaken by its mys- 
terious emotional power. But strong and character- 
istic as this psychosis is — it probably is due to the 
submaximal excitement of widespreading associational 
brain-tracts — the only name we have for all its 
shadings is 'sense of familiarity.'" * 

In the passage just quoted there is a hint of what 
seems to be the correct interpretation of these facts. 
The '^ submaximal excitement of widespreading asso- 
ciational brain-tracts" means that the present experi- 
ence summarizes a long history, which is duly recorded 
in the nervous system. The physical response is like 
the germ cell in that it carries within itself potencies 
and tendencies dating far back into the forgotten past. 
Instead of being confined to a narrow groove, the 
response reverberates throughout the entire nervous 
system. Within this complex response are included 
an endless variety of nascent responses with which it 
has been previously associated or which are partly 
identical with it. The entire organization is a func- 
tional unit, but it is of such a kind that a slight shift 
in the center of gravity will upset the equilibrium and 
precipitate a new organization. Or, to speak less 
metaphorically, the response as a whole is a coordina- 

* James, W. — Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, p. 252. 



222 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

tion of shifting tendencies; it is, therefore, a changing 
process and not a completed fact. The whole of con- 
scious life is a constant reorganization. Every moment 
is a transition; every adjustment is a stepping-stone 
to further adjustment. 

With regard to the bearing of this interpretation of 
consciousness upon the problems of education, it is 
unnecessary to go into detail, for the reason that the 
entire foregoing discussion is, in a sense, an applica- 
tion of this doctrine to education. It will readily be 
seen, for example, that this theory of the changing 
stimulus commits us to the view that there can be no 
fixed and final aims for education or for life. There 
can be no final and complete adjustment; if there 
were, conduct would become automatic and conscious- 
ness would disappear. And as long as new adjust- 
ments must be made, there will be a constant re-crea- 
tion and enlargement of our aims and ideals. A clue 
to the interpretation of interest and duty is found in 
the fact that interest or absorption in an activity 
means that the various reactions are unified or organ- 
ized so as to cooperate for the attainment of an end, 
whereas the sense of duty is an indication that there 
is a conflict of ends. The process of thinking is the 
method of intelligent adjustment and means that the 
facts in the case are so organized or related that no 
basis is left for a conflict of tendencies; i.e., for rea- 
sonable doubt. In this process, things are used 
to represent other things; concepts are developed and 



CONSCIOUSNESS AS BEHAVIOR 223 

fixed by means of symbols, so as to enable them to take 
their place in the scheme of things as objects of a new 
kind, which serve as tools for thinking and furnish 
a convenient means of communication. Lastly, this 
position removes the basis for the conventional notion 
of culture, which had its origin in the belief that mind 
was a more or less detached existence, to be cultivated 
for its own sake, apart from the practical affairs of 
life. As an educational ideal this notion perpetuated 
the aristocratic conception of life; it cultivated, more 
or less deliberately, a disregard of, or even contempt for, 
legitimate human interests, and to that extent it hin- 
dered the development of common interests and the 
sense of a common life, which constitutes the ideal of 
democracy. 

REFERENCES 

CoLViN and Bagley — Human Behavior, ch. 1. 

Dewey, J. — Democracy and Education, ch. 22. 

Dewey, J. and Others. — Creative Intelligence, pp. 228-281. 

FuLLERTON, G. S. — Introduction to Philosophy, ch. 4. 

James, W. — Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, pp. 1-27. 

— Essays in Radical Empiricism, ch. 1. 
Jastrow, J. — Fact and Fable in Psychology, pp. 307-336. 
Sellars, R. W. — Essentials of Philosophy, ch. 21. 



CHAPTER XII 
EDUCATION AND PHILOSOPHY 

In any system of education there are two considera- 
tions that are of fundamental importance. One of 
these is the question of the aims which are to be real- 
ized; the other is the nature of the mind which is to 
receive the education. These two matters may be in- 
timately conjoined. If, for example, the nature of the 
mind be conceived along the lines of the faculty psy- 
chology, there is considerable justification for the in- 
ference that the aim of education should be to fur- 
nish training on the basis of formal discipline. Simi- 
larly the conclusion that the mind is to be interpreted 
in terms of behavior leads naturally to the inference 
that there are no fixed aims in education, but that the 
proper test is the development of capacity for future 
growth. The question of aims in education is obvi- 
ously bound up with the question of what is of supreme 
value in life; and this question, like that of the nature 
of mind, is commonly regarded as a philosophic prob- 
lem. It is evident, therefore, that there is an intimate 
connection between education and philosophy. 
/This view is justified by history. If we turn to the 
eminent philosophers, such as Plato, Locke, Kant, and 
Spencer, who have written on education, we find that 

224 



EDUCATION AND PHILOSOPHY 225 

their educational doctrines were, in the main, an 
application of their philosophical opinions. To them 
education was chiefly an agency for advancing a 
certain philosophy. Education has, in fact, always 
leaned heavily on philosophy, until the last few 
decades. 

At present there is, perhaps, less sense of contact 
and mutual dependence between these two subjects 
than at any previous time. Various causes have led 
up to this result. For one thing, the development of 
science and of scientific method gave a tremendous 
impetus to educational investigations that had no 
direct connection with philosophic theory. It opened up 
great fields, such as those of educational psychology, ad- 
ministration, and tests and measurements, to which 
the investigator could retreat, in blissful seclusion from 
philosophic debate. Moreover, the exploitation of 
these fields yielded a substantial body of fact, which 
contrasted agreeably with the barrenness of earlier 
periods. As a result, scientific method was exalted, 
and workers in the field of education became eager to 
shake off all entangling alliances with philosophy. 
Another circumstance which strengthened the tendency 
to draw apart from philosophy was the fact that for 
a considerable period philosophy was more or less dis- 
credited by science generally. The reason for this it 
is not necessary to examine here, except to say that 
philosophy had failed to appreciate the significance of 
evolutionism and of science generally, and so had failed 



226 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

to cultivate relations of understanding and coopera- 
tion, with the result that it became more and ^ more 
isolated and ineffective. The development of science 
meant, indeed, that men were learning to control na- 
ture for their own purposes, but it also meant that 
science could become productive of new aims, that the 
law of evolution is constant re-creation or growth. 
Instead of following out this clue, philosophy tended 
to lose itself in speculations about an eternal and un- 
changeable reality, and so became more of a closet 
occupation than a guide of life. 

The net result of this development has been to place 
philosophy on the defensive. Why have a philosophy 
at all? Speculation was all very well as long as the 
sciences were undeveloped and men could only guess 
at the nature of things. Such guessing was perhaps 
better than nothing at all, but it was, at best, only a 
very poor substitute for the detailed, painstaking pro- 
cesses of science. This method of progress is indeed 
slower and less showy than the dashing, irresponsible 
attacks made by philosophy, but in the end the long- 
est way around is the shortest distance to the goal. 
In science we find a steady progress from generation 
to generation; facts are not accepted as facts until 
they have been rigorously tested and verified, but 
after this has been done they become a permanent 
possession. In philosophy, on the other hand, we have 
only a series of individual attempts, each of which 
begins by overthrowing the conclusions of its prede- 



EDUCATION AND PHILOSOPHY 227 

cesser. The same problems recur again and again, 
and the outstanding feature of the whole industry is 
the disagreement of the experts. There is consider- 
able motion, but no progress. 

This indictment of philosophy suffers somewhat 
from exaggeration, but this fact need not concern us 
just now. For present purposes the main contention 
may be admitted. There is no agreement, and there 
is little progress, as progress is measured in the sci- 
ences. If philosophy is regarded as a substitute for 
science or as an attempt to do the same sort of work 
as science, the case against it is most damaging and 
philosophy stands condemned. 

The matter appears in a different light, however, if 
we take the position that the work of philosophy is 
essentially different from that of science. The differ- 
ence may be pointed out most simply and clearly, per- 
haps, in connection with education. As was suggested 
in the first chapter, formal education brings with it 
the necessity of reflection on aims. It becomes neces- 
sary to determine what kind of result is to be secured. 
This question, it will be observed, is not a matter of 
scientific discovery in the same sense as was the dis- 
covery of the chemical composition of water or the 
distance from the earth to the nearest star. It is not 
a question of scientific discovery, because it is not a 
question of finding out something that is already exist- 
ent, but of finding out what it is that we should really 
desire to achieve by means of educational agencies. 



228 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

What sort of interests and tastes shall we cultivate, 
what kind of society shall we try to build up? ^ The 
process can be guided in various directions; the issue 
is not simply one of fact, but of preferertc^e or ideals. Or, 
to put it differently, our preferences and ideals have 
much influence in determining what we shall accept as 
fact, with regard to the moral life. Hence a doctrine 
of aims is more akin to a political platform than to 
scientific discovery. 

This does not mean, of course, that the selection of 
aims is determined by naked preference, without regard 
to the facts in the case. If an aim turns out to be at 
odds with the facts, it must be revised, or perhaps dis- 
carded. Perpetual motion, for example, ceases to be a 
rational aim when viewed in the light of the principles 
established by physics. Similarly the ideal of formal 
discipline goes by the board with the rejection of fac- 
ulty psychology. But what are we to do when the facts 
themselves are in dispute, owing to a difference in pref- 
erences or scheme of values? The unhappy Omar Khay- 
yam is overwhelmed in his inmost being by a sense of 
fatalism, whereas Carlyle and Henley undertake to defy 
the universe, because of an immediate realization that 
they are free. To the biological evolutionist the law of 
struggle and survival may tell the whole story of moral 
values, but to Tennyson science is, at best, a partial 
and pitifully inadequate account of experience. 

Who forged that other influence, 
That heat of inward evidence** 



EDUCATION AND PHILOSOPHY 229 

At first sight this may seem a disturbing situation. 
If the question of aims cannot be settled by appeal 
to fact, it is not immediately clear how we can deal 
with the question at all. Must we conclude that no 
preferences have any moral equality? Some people like 
one kind of aim and some another, just as some people 
are conservative by temperament while others are 
radical. De gustibus non est disputandum. Some peo- 
ple consider practical utility the best thing in life, 
others give first place to culture, still others have such 
preferences as moral character, or reputation, or power, 
or ease. So far as educational aims are concerned, 
there are all sorts of aims, just as there are all sorts of 
people, and back of that we cannot go. 

Whether this is a sound philosophy we need not 
pause just now to inquire. We may note instead that, 
whether right or wrong, it is a philosophy, and not 
exactly an uncommon philosophy either. In its moral 
application it is the doctrine that might makes right. 
Since we cannot go back of the fact that human de- 
sires vary a great deal, and since the aims in which 
these desires find expression likewise vary, there is no 
escape from the conclusion, so it is argued, that no 
single aim can be imposed upon everybody. Each 
individual likes his own aim best, and when these aims 
prove to be incompatible with one another, there is no 
umpire to whom we can appeal, and the only thing to do 
is to let them fight it out. It is true that people often de- 
sire things which are not '^good" for them, but the 



230 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

term ''good" is ambiguous in this connection. A life 
of dissipation is not good for a man in the sense that 
it injures him physically and morally and economically, 
but it is a good in the sense that he likes it, and if he 
prefers the dissipation to these other goods, how are 
we to prove to him that these other goods are more 
to be desired? It is always open to him to retort 
that this depends on the point of view and that 
he happens to hold a different point of view. Why 
should he be asked to yield his preference to that of 
some one else? To be sure, the good of others may 
be involved in his conduct. But he has, perhaps, al- 
ready taken that into consideration and nevertheless 
come to the conclusion that he prefers to go on as 
before. To say that his conduct is wrong means simply 
that other people take more pleasure or satisfaction 
in a different kind of life. Well, each man to his 
taste. 

Most people would undoubtedly take exception to 
this doctrine, which suggests that the position in ques- 
tion is philosophy and not science. If a proposition 
in science is more than just a working hypothesis, it 
has to be accepted by all who are competent to judge 
of the evidence, whether they like it or not. But the 
doctrine under discussion is fundamentally the expres- 
sion of an attitude toward life, an attitude that has 
been generalized and is therefore called a philosophy. 
Viewed as an attitude this philosophy represents an 
attempt to vindicate the claim of our natural impulses 




EDUCATION AND PHILOSOPHY 231 

and desires as against restrictions imposed by an ex- 
ternal authority. In the past it was the duty of the 
moral man to fight against the seductions of the world, 
the flesh and the devil. Our natural impulses were 
frequently supposed to be inherently evil and to re- 
quire eradication. As against this, the contention of 
this doctrine is that our natural impulses have a right 
to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They 
must be taken as we find them, and the only criterion 
by which they can be evaluated is the law of struggle 
and survival of the fittest. The statement that the 
attitude is generalized means that the facts of psychol- 
ogy, of history, and of industrial and commercial life 
are all interpreted so as to bring them into line with 
this point of view, which makes it a philosophy; 
i.e., a comprehensive plan or program for conduct. 
The doctrine is not new. It is discussed in Plato's 
Republic, at the point where Thrasymachus makes the 
assertion that justice is ' ' the interest of the stronger. ' ' In 
recent times it has drawn considerable inspiration from 
the theory of evolution, which fm-nishes the suggestion 
that human conduct is an extension of the principle 
of struggle and survival. Man is a product of his 
environment; his desires and impulses are whatever 
they happen to be, and they furnish the only rational 
law of conduct. Morality is ''the shadow of an out- 
worn creed." This attitude is a philosophy when we 
generalize it by interpreting all the relevant facts so 
as to form a consistent system. When this is done 



232 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

we are perhaps startled and repelled by the result, 
but specific instances of this attitude do not neces- 
sarily arouse a sense of horror. The jingoistic spirit, 
for example, of the maxim, ^'My country, right or 
wrong,'' may pass as fine patriotism; unrestricted 
competition, with the ruthless elimination of the unfit, 
may be viewed as a sound business principle; and the 
sanctification of childish whim may be accepted as 
educational gospel. When stripped of their trappings, 
however, and reduced to their fighting weight, what 
are these attitudes but offshoots of the parent doc- 
trine that might makes right? And in so far as educa- 
tion promotes blind patriotism, makes earning power 
the measure of success, or spreads the faith that every 
desire or impulse of the child should claim our pious 
reverence, may it not fairly be charged with the offense 
of giving aid and comfort to this philosophy? 

But, as has already been said, a philosophy is never 
more than one of various alternatives. There remain 
other lines of possible approach. It is true that nature, 
as revealed in the physical sciences, is indifferent to moral 
values. Its processes seem to have no reference to moral 
standards. In the language of Matthew Arnold: 

Streams will not curb their pride 

The just man not to entomb; 

Nor lightnings go aside 

To give his virtues room. 

Nor is that wind less rough which blows a good man^s bargeJ 

1 Arnold, M. — "Empedocles on Aetna." 



EDUCATION AND PHILOSOPHY 233 

If this be the case it would seem that we must take 
either of two roads. We may adopt the view that 
man, for all his vaunted morality, is no exception to 
the cosmic law, but is just a plaything of nature. His 
conduct is simply a resultant of forces, in much the 
same sense as is any other phenomenon of nature. 
Or we may hold that somehow man does constitute 
an exception. The claim that man is just a part 
of this nonmoral nature is rejected. ''The Ever- 
lasting No had said: 'Behold, thou art fatherless, 
outcast, and the whole Universe is mine (the 
Devil's)': to which my whole Me now made answer: 
'I am not thine, but Free, and forever hate 

This quotation from Carlyle expresses an attitude, but 
in order to transform this attitude into a philosophy it 
must be generalized. The attitude must serve as a 
point of orientation for the organization of knowledge 
into a system. There must be a reinterpretation of 
the facts of science, of history, and of experience gen- 
erally. One way of doing this is to take the position 
that nature, as science deals with it, is not the whole 
of reality, but merely the "visible emblem" or "outer 
garment" of a deeper reality. Nature is, indeed, just 
a blind mechanism; the inference, however, to be 
drawn from this is not that a man has no soul and 
no moral being, but that man is a much more signifi- 

1 Carlyle, T. — Sartor Resartus, ch. 7. (See also Henley's poem, "Out 
of the Night That Covers Me.") 



234 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

cant revelation of reality than nature. The sources 
of our being Ue in a reahn beyond this world of 
fleeting phenomena. This is the road that leads 
to Platonism and Emersonian Transcendentahsm, 
and it is the road that was taken by Carlyle. 
Or we may take the facts of the spiritual life as 
evidence of a soul-substance, which cannot be 
accounted for in terms of nature, but which must 
be attributed to a reaUty beyond nature. The 
history of thought presents many forms of philosophy 
which hold in common the doctrine that the facts 
of nature and of human life must find their ultimate 
explanation in a reality different in kind from our 
world of space and time. 

This elucidation will perhaps serve to indicate the 
chief reason why philosophers are in perpetual disagree- 
ment with one another. More than to anything else 
these differences may be traced back to differences of 
conception as to the meaning and value of the moral 
life. As a consequence, the same facts are given widely 
different interpretations, in a way similar to that 
sometimes used in politics, when one platform may 
^^ point with pride,^' while the other ^^ views with 
alarm." One position, for example, contends that de- 
sires, and the aims corresponding to them, must be 
accepted as they are, whereas the other insists that 
desires can and should be controlled in conformity with 
a moral standard. Consequently, there is much argu- 
ment ^' about it and about," but there can be no essen- 



EDUCATION AND PHILOSOPHY 235 

tial agreement as long as this difference in moral 
attitude persists. 

The issue that has just been raised is too large to 
be discussed here in detail, but we may indicate very 
briefly certain considerations in support of the view- 
that there is a higher level than the principle that 
might makes right. It is true, no doubt, that when 
there is a conflict of desires the issue is sometimes 
decided by a test of strength. This fact is all too 
familiar in the experience of individuals and of nations. 
But is this necessarily the inevitable and appropriate 
method of adjustment? ^^When an individual settles 
a conflict of his own ideals, he certainly does not ordi- 
narily let the various desires fight it out. There is 
often a struggle, and sometimes a particular impulse 
does a good deal of pushing and slugging, but, as a 
rule, the individual aims at an adjustment in which 
the various desires involved shall have consideration. 
The pressure of the community, his own 'larger' good, 
a 'remoter' good, any or all of these, and other con- 
siderations still may be brought in to check the force 
of immediate desire. That is to say, intelligence enters 
to adjust the conflict in the interest of a more com- 
prehensive whole. And this is accomplished through 
the creation of a new goal in which the ideals in 
conflict have some sort of proportionate representation. 
This is the unique function of intelligence in crises of 
this sort. All that is necessary (and of course, we 
have done it repeatedly) is to extend this method to 



236 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

conflicts between the ideals of different individuals, 
groups and nations." ^ 

Fundamentally, the issue may be said to rest on 
the status of intelligence in the scheme of things. Is 
intelligence limited to the function of selecting the 
means for the realization of the ends that are set by 
our desires, or is it possible to cultivate desires, to create 
new ends? The discussions of our first five chapters in 
particular are based on the proposition that desires 
are subject to the direction of intelligence, and that 
the progressive building up of a moral order is man's 
finest achievement and highest ideal. 

If it be conceded that desires may be directed and 
transformed by intelligence, there remains the ques- 
tion as to the standard by which this control is to be 
evaluated. Historically, the answers given to this 
question have usually been based on the belief that 
the standards for conduct must be obtained from a 
supersensuous or transcendental world. With Aris- 
totle the highest life consisted in the intellectual con- 
templation of this supersensuous and eternal reality; 
with certain theological creeds it consisted in the up- 
rooting of desires so as to make the individual wholly 
submissive to the divine will; with Kant it consisted 
in reverence for the categorical imperative or the moral 

^Otto, M. C. — "Morality as Coercion or Persuasion" ; Internaiional 
Journal of Ethics, Vol. XXXI, p. 18. This article is a remarkably 
clear and able discussion of the matter at issue. The reader is also 
referred to an article by the writer, "Justice Holmes on Natural Law 
and the Moral Ideal," in the same journal, Vol. XXIX, p. 397. 



EDUCATION AND PHILOSOPHY 237 

law. Ethical systems have been numerous and varied, 
but for the most part they have assumed a sharp cleav- 
age between the world of nature and the world of moral 
conduct, in that we must base morality on something 
quite separate; e.g., on revelation, or intuition, or 
reason, or a distinct "moral sense." 

The tendency of this procedure has always been to 
shift the emphasis from "growth'^ or the ideal of a 
completely socialized community to something else. 
In education it has led to fixed aims of all sorts; e.g., 
the traditional ideal of culture, with its arbi- 
trary distinction between the cultural and the prac- 
tical, and with its incredible blindness to the human 
quality of educational materials that did not happen to 
get listed as cultural at the outset. If morality and 
the things of the spirit are set apart in this fashion, 
the conclusion is natural that the spirit of man must 
be fed on a special diet, and equally natural that the 
bill of fare should be prescribed by tradition. Granted 
the separation of nature and morality, the conclusion 
is at least plausible that "the study of science tends 
not one whit toward humanization, toward refinement, 
toward temperamental regeneration; it tends only to 
develop an accurate trick of the senses, fine observa- 
tion, crude intellectual strength. '^ Historically, the 
standpoint has afforded a sanction for the cultivation 
of the virtues, not so much from a realization of their 
social significance as from a sense of abstract or "blind" 
duty. And in particular it has interfered with a sen- 



238 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

sitiveness to human quality wherever it may exist, 
which is so emphatically an educational opportunity 
and so essential as a guarantee for the future. 

It is true that if we deny the difference between man 
and nature no room is left for morality. But is it 
necessary to go to the other extreme and assert the 
existence of two wholly different worlds, in order to 
find a basis for morality? Is it not possible to main- 
tain the integrity of morality and yet make morality 
a thing of the present world and of present hving? 
This means, of course, a different attitude, with a 
different emphasis upon moral values; and the at- 
tempt to generalize this attitude leads to another 
system of philosophy. From this standpoint the em- 
phasis falls naturally on the concept of growth, which 
determines the approach to the interpretation of such 
concepts as democracy, duty, thinking, transfer, and 
consciousness. It is an interpretation which gives a 
different outlook upon life and an increased significance 
to the meaning of what in religious phraseology is 
called the brotherhood of man and the coming of the 
Kingdom of Heaven upon earth. 

To a considerable extent the standpoint presented 
in this book is simply a formulation of a tendency that 
has gained unmistakably in momentum in modern 
times. We are more and more disposed to recognize 
the fact that the problem of existence is a problem of 
securing increased control over natural and social 
agencies, so as to use them for human ends. At an 



EDUCATION AND PHILOSOPHY 239 

earlier period man found himself confronted with an 
environment that was not only alien, but frequently 
hostile. He might try to cajole, but he could not 
dictate. Only gradually did he discover that the forces 
of the environment could be made the servants of his 
will, that it was not necessary to ^'accept the uni- 
verse." And he has profited by the discovery. If he 
finds that the surroundings are unhealthful, he drains 
the swamps, kills the mosquitoes, and provides him- 
self with quinine ; if the weather is too hot or too cold, 
he constructs electric fans or steam-heated houses; if 
the immediate vicinity is unproductive, he remedies 
the defect by irrigation or fertihzation, by experi- 
menting with crops, or by levying tribute on the four 
corners of the earth through elaborate systems of 
transportation. Instead of adapting himself to the 
environment, he compels the environment to adapt 
itself to him. How completely he has escaped from 
the law of evolution is evident from the fact that 
Natural Selection, in its original sense, no longer applies 
to human society. A being that can construct its own 
environment is no longer subject to the tyranny of the 
environment. 

The realization that the events which make for 
human weal or woe can be controlled to an indefinite 
extent has come only since yesterday. Science in the 
modern sense is scarcely two centuries old; and even 
in our day people have objected to vaccination and 
rain-making on the ground that they were impious 



240 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

interferences with the will of Providence. The devel- 
opment of science has made us less inclined to ask 
whether nature is favorable to man and much more 
interested to discover how nature may be used to 
serve the purposes of man. But as regards moral 
conduct, this change in point of view is still lagging 
by the way. Here it is not so clearly realized that 
the moral problem is the problem of gaining control 
over social forces so as to shape human motives and 
build up a truly democratic organization. The exist- 
ence of injustice is not, ipso facto, a condemnation of the 
universe but a challenge to the mind and heart of man. 
A world in which there were no new ends to be created, 
no new adjustments to be made, would leave no 
room for intelligence and could impose no moral 
obligation. 

Yet this insight is steadily gaining ground. Men 
are less disposed to blame the universe for moral im- 
perfections, or to cling to a receding past, or to be- 
guile themselves with Utopias from the work that is 
to be done. Instead, they are learning to face the 
future with a new sense of responsibility for the com- 
ing of a better moral order and for the development 
of personality. In proportion as impulses become trans- 
fused with sympathy and understanding, conduct 
becomes free and responsible, and men attain citizen- 
ship in the city not made with hands. For it is by 
virtue of this transformation that the sorry scheme of 
things may become molded into a world in which men 



EDUCATION AND PHILOSOPHY 241 

will dwell together in the freedom and equality of com- 
mon devotion to ideal ends. 

If education is to have a worthy part in this devel- 
opment, it must have a clear realization of the issues 
and a definite sense of direction. It may be freely 
conceded that the estrangement between education 
and philosophy has had certain compensations. The 
sense of freedom from tutelage and from the traditions 
of the past has brought to education a certain exhila- 
ration and the disposition to observe and experiment. 
The conviction, though mistaken, that the problems 
of education could all be solved through the applica- 
tion of scientific method gave a powerful impetus to 
investigation and resulted in the acquisition of a most 
valuable body of organized knowledge. But in the 
emphasis upon statistics, methods, measurements, and 
practicality, the significance of ideals and apprecia- 
tions has become obscured. There is danger of over- 
looking the big issues in fatuous admiration of our 
achievements in detail. Unless we know where we 
are going there is not much comfort in being assured 
that we are on the way and traveling fast. The result 
is likely to be that much of our progress is but seem- 
ing. We do not escape from the bondage of the past 
merely by issuing an Emancipation Proclamation. 
The old contrast between the cultural and the prac- 
tical has tended to persist, with little appreciation of 
the fact that the cultural could be practical or that the 
practical could be cultural. Vocational subjects on 



242 FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION 

the one hand, and hterature and science on the other, 
are still left too much without a significant social con- 
text ; and to the extent that this is the case, the aims 
of culture are defeated and the ideal of democracy is 
left to take care of itself. 

If education is to discharge its rightful function of 
leadership it must clarify its guiding ideals. The 
present is full of opportunity. Education has assumed 
a magnitude and importance that it never had before. 
The position of leadership has been thrust upon it. 
It has become in an emphatic sense the guardian of 
the future, and there is no way by which it can measure 
up to its responsibility and opportunity except through 
the cultivation and propagation of an attitude or 
spirit that will make men more human and life more 
rich and beautiful. ~ 

REFERENCES 

Butler, N. M. — The Meaning of Education, pp. 37-66. 

Carlyle, T. — Sartor Resartus, Part I, chs. 9, 10, 11. 

Dewey, J. — Democracy and Education, ch. 24. 

— Reconstruction in Philosophy, ch. 1. 

Henderson, E. N. — Principles of Education, ch. 1. 

HoRNE, H. H. — The Philosophy of Education, ch. 8. 

McGiLVARY, E. B. — "The Warfare of Modem Ideals"; Hibbert 
Journal, Vol. XIV, p. 43. 

Russell, B. — Philosophical Essays, ch. 2 ("The Free Man^s Wor- 
ship"). 



INDEX 



Activity, purposive, 86, 166, 184, 

185, 192, 211. 
Aims, development of, 5, 6, 7, 72; in 

education, 4, 8-15, 34, 222, 224. 
Americanization, 54-58. 
Appreciation, 13, 23, 27, 35, 37, 76. 
Aristocratic tradition, 10, 223. 
Aristotle, 16, 176, 177, 236. 
Arnold, M., 18, 232. 
Association, 220. 

Attention, 48, 187, 214, 215, 219. 
Attitude, 230, 231. 

Bagley, W. C, 20, 21, 41, 62, 83, 104, 
109, 110, 125, 126, 144, 147, 161, 
162, 223. 

Behavior, 5, 47-49, 70, 91, 184, 192, 
194, 197, 203 S. 

Betts, G. H., 21, 62. 

Bobbitt, F., 36, 41, 62. 

Bode, B. H., 41, 235. 

Bonser, F. G., 144. 

Bosanquet, B., 119. 

Bowne, B. P., 181. 

Butler, N. M., 21, 242. 

Carlyle, T., 228, 233. 
Charters, W. W., 21, 104. 
Classes, distinctions of, 50, 176 ff. 
Colvin, S. S., 99, 104, 125, 162, 223. 
Complete Act of Thought, 108, 112, 

132, 189. 
Concept, 65, 107, 124, 152, 158, 222. 
Conduct. See Behavior. 
Consciousness, 164, 167, 168, 173, 

183, 184, 192, 193, 197, 199 ff.; 

definition of, 216, 236, 238. 
Conservation of energy, 169, 190, 

191. 
Coursault, J. H., 41, 62, 104. 
Creighton, J. E., 125. 
Criminals, 49. 



Culture and the cultural, 10, 15, 28, 

33, 176, 179, 180, 223, 238. 
Curriculum, 38, 161. 

Darwin, C, 108, 113, 141. 
Deduction, 109, 110, 111, 118, 125, 

129, 131, 187, 188. 
Democracy, 7, 38, 47-62; definition 

of, 52, 178, 223, 238, 240, 241. 
Descartes, R., 165-167, 281. 
Development lesson, 126. 
Dewey, J., 21, 31, 36, 41, 52, 62, 73, 

83, 104, 108, 125, 144, 160, 179, 198, 

223, 242. 
Duty, 84 ff., 237, 238. 

Education, informal and formal, 2, 3 ; 
related to reform, 4, 36, 59, 60, 61, 
79, 82, 241; and practical life, 17; 
as growth, 11, 12, 19, 20, 78; social, 
29, 31-34, 42^7; democratic, 59- 
62; and ideals, 75-78; and propa- 
ganda, 82; and philosophy, 224 ff. 

Effort, 86 ff. 

Epistemology, 196. 

Faculty psychology, 80, 145 ff., 167, 

172 ff. 
Formal discipline, 148, 176, 180, 224, 

228. 
Fullerton, G. S., 181, 223. 

Galton, F., 187. 

Golden Rule, 7, 62. 

Greeks, 10, 38, 187, 188. 

Growth, 11, 12, 19, 20, 34, 78, 237. 

Habit, 149 ff , 213. 
Hanus, P., 21. 
Heck, W. H., 162. 
Henderson, E. N., 242. 
Henley, W. E., 228, 233. 



243 



244 



INDEX 



Henry, O.. 10. 

Herbart and the Herbartian lesson 

plan, 126, 132, 133, 135, 136, 188, 

189. 
Holmes, Sherlock, 98. 
Holmes, S. J., 205. 
Home, H. H., 242. 
Huxley, T. H., 160, 198. 
Hypothesis, 109, 111, 129, 132. 

Ideals, 47, 55-58; and impulses, 63; 

and concepts, 64; and the self, 65; 

and control, 69; growth of, 71, 72, 

78, 228, 241. 
Imagination, 45, 76, 90, 102, 103. 
Implication, 124. 
Impulse, 63, 67, 87, 89, 91, 230, 231, 

232. 
Induction, 118,124, 129, 131, 187,188. 
Inference, 106, 107. 
Intelligence. See Consciousness. 
Interactionism, 190-195. 
Interest, 34, 84 ff., 222. 

James, W., 22, 45, 83, 85, 92, 117, 
142, 156, 158, 169, 175, 181, 191, 
198, 204, 208, 215, 218, 221, 223. 

Jastrow, J., 223. 

Jingoism, 55, 231. 

Judd, C. H., 162. 

Kant, I., 224, 236. 
Kilpatrick, W. H., 144. 
King, I., 62. 

Ladd, G. T., 198. 

Latin, 15, 30, 31, 39, 54, 55, 56. 

Lincoln, A., 39, 40, 54, 55, 56. 

Localization of function, 171, 175. 

Locke, J., 181, 224. 

Loyalty, 69, 70, 71. 

MacDougall, W., 181, 198. 
Mann, H., 141. 
Materialism, 78, 172. 
Mathematics, 13, 14, 25. 
Meaning, 29, 51, 69, 90, 105-107, 

149 ff., 214-217. 
Mechanism and mechanical behavior, 

167, 192, 193, 194, 195, 204-207, 

209, 210, 211, 212. 



Mecklin, J., 62, 83. i 

Memory, 172. 

Mental states, 182 S. 

Miller, I., 125. 

Mind, 167, 176, 181, 189, 190-194. 

Moore, E. C, 21, 41, 188. 

Moral, 43, 72, 73. 

Morgan, J., 156. 

Morgan, Lloyd, 125. 

Natural Selection, 108, 113, 141, 239. 
Nature study, 185, 186. 
Newton, I., 130, 155. 
Norseworthy, N., 147. 

Obedience, 70, 77. 

Object lesson, 185. 

Objectives in education, 25-29. 

Omar Khayyam, 228. 

Otto, M. C, 83, 104, 235. 

Parallelism, 192, 193, 195. 
Participation, as form of education, 

2, 178. 
Particular, 119, 122. 
Paulsen, F., 83, 181. 
Pearson, K., 198. 
Perception, 187, 218. 
Phrenology, 174. -^| 

Pike, 205, 210. H 

PUlsbury, W., 125. ^' 

Plato, 224, 231. 
Prediction and verification, 112, 114, 

136. 
Project Method, 138-140. 
Psychic, 219. 
Punishment, 93, 94, 103. 
Puzzle picture, 216, 217, 218. 

Reasonable doubt, 117, 118, 136, 
222. 

Reflex action, 4, 150, 206, 207, 208. 

Report, Bureau of Education, 41; 
Committee for Curriculum Con- 
struction, 41. 

Rousseau, J. J., 68. 

Ruediger, W. C, 21, 162. 

Sabin, E. E., 181, 203. 
Science, in education, 18, 39, 225, 
241. 



INDEX 



245 



Scrutiny and explanation, 112, 136. 

Selfishness, 73-75. 

Selfhood, 65 ff. 

Sellars, R. W., 223. 

Shelley, P. B., 65. 

Snedden, D., 62. 

Social criterion, 31, 38, 42-45, 61. 

Soul-substance, 163 ff., 182, 183, 185, 

189, 195, 197, 234. 
Specific ability, 147-149, 174. 
Spencer, H., 224. 
Stimulus. 48, 212 ff. 
Strayer, G. D., 21, 144. 
Strong, C, 198. 
Suggestion, 108, 111, 130, 133. 

Tannenbaum, F., 49. 
Tennyson, A., 12, 77, 228. 
Theory and practice, 1, 4. 
Thinking, 105 ff., training in, 126 ff., 

185, 187, 222. 
Thorndike, E. L., 9, 21, 144, 162. 



Training, specific and general, 147, 

176. 178. 
Transcendentalism, 233. 
Transfer of training, 145 ff., 174, 180, 

238. 
Tufts, J. H., 62, 73, 83, 104. 

Understanding, 46, 50, 61, 79. 
Universal, 121, 122. 

Values, educational, 22 ff., 63; 

moral, 72, 73, 75; intrinsic and 

instrumental, 22. 
Visual memory, 172. 
Vocational training, 26, 33-37, 60, 

178. 

Warren, H. C, 198. 
Weight, 200, 201. 
Whim, 84, 86, 94, 232. 
Woodworth R. S., 198. 
Wordsworth, W., 162. 



M 



3477 



^ I 



I 



